Sintering kinetics of the powder during fields-activated micro-forming and sintering (Micro-FAST) of copper micro-gears

Huang, Kunlan and Yang, Yi and Qin, Yi; Micari, Fabrizio and Fratini, Livan, eds. (2014) Sintering kinetics of the powder during fields-activated micro-forming and sintering (Micro-FAST) of copper micro-gears. In: Metal Forming 2014. Key Engineering Materials, 622-623 . Trans Tech Publications Ltd, ITA, pp. 854-860. ISBN 9783038351931 (https://doi.org/10.4028/www.scientific.net/KEM.622...)

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Abstract

Forming of micro-components from powder with fields-activated sintering technology (FAST) renders different forming and sintering mechanisms, comparing to that occurring during the forming of macro-sized components with a similar technology. Establishing a good understanding of these mechanisms would help process design and control aiming at achieving desired quality of the components to be formed. This paper presents a study and the results on the sintering kinetics of the powder during Micro-FAST for the fabrication of micro-gears (the module is 0.2 and the pitch diameter 1.6 mm) from copper powder. The results showed that the densification of copper powder is related largely to the bulk plastic-deformations of the particles and the melting of the particles at contact interfaces. Particularly, it is revealed that plastic deformations of the copper particles mainly occurred at approximately 340 °C and melting of the particle-interfaces at approximately 640 °C. Differently, in a densification process with a traditional powder sintering method, grain growth and neck growth would, normally, be two dominant mechanisms that achieve the densification of powder.

ORCID iDs

Huang, Kunlan, Yang, Yi and Qin, Yi ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7103-4855; Micari, Fabrizio and Fratini, Livan
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