| Low alloy steel, silicon. A work hardenable steel alloy that offers very good magnetic properties, tensile strength, hardness, wear resistance, and increased spring steel strength. Can be plated or coated for corrosion resistance. Often used for armatures, relays, solenoids, and applications where good magnetic, low core loss and high electrical resistivity in AC and DC applications is required. Property values reported are typical for Kinetics' MIM products. Metal Injection Molding General Notes: Fine metal powders (generally <25 microns in diameter) are combined with a polymer binder system to form a feedstock suitable for injection molding. Kinetics' feedstock is compounded using specific binder and metal powder formulations to control consistency, quality, and dimensional repeatability of parts produced. While standard plastic injection molding machines and molds are used to produce MIM parts, due to the presence of the polymer binder in MIM feedstocks, mold cavities are designed approximately 20% larger than the final part size. Like plastics, MIM molds may have multiple cavities, inserts, slides, unscrewing cores, and hot runner systems. After molding, green parts are debound and sintered at temperatures up to 2,600°F. During debinding, the polymer binder breaks down and dissipates while the metal particles retain all of the molded features. The metal particles fuse together during sintering and the part shrinks approximately 20% to form a solid metal part. Information provided by Kinetics, Inc. |
