Co-injection promises

further growth for MIM

Powder co-injection moulding is a new vari- suited to small complex geometries requiring
relatively thick coatings.
ant of metal injection moulding (M/M) that
Cranfield University in the UK has
promises to extend the technology’s capabili- recently shown how surface engineering can
ties to provide cost-effective, surface engi- be integrated into the metal injection mould-
neered components. Dr Jeffrey A/cock of ing (MIMI process, offering the ability to both
surface engineer and manufacture small,
Cranfield University (Cranfield, UK) outlines complex metallic components to net-shape in
the process and its possibilities. a single manufacturing process. This new
process, called powder co-injection moulding
(PCM), amalgamates the standard MIM

M
etallic components are often process with sandwich moulding.
required to operate under severe
mechanical contact conditions Process principles
and/or in aggressive environments. To
improve component life cycles, surface engi- MIM is a process that takes the high through-
neering through the use of coatings and sur- put and easy shape-forming advantages of
face treatments has become common. polymer injection moulding and applies them
However, the coating process is typically an to powder metals. Sinterable, fine-scale
additional processing stage and, depending metallic powders, produced for example by
on the application method, is often less gas atomization, are mixed with a minimum
of 3Ovol.% thermoplastic polymer. This feed-
stock is fed into a moulding machine and used
to produce metallic-powder ‘green’ parts at
similar cycle times to those found in polymer
injection moulding. The green parts possess
all the shape complexity of the final compo-
nent but appear ‘photographically enlarged
because of their binder content. This binder is
removed prior to sintering, and the sintering
process then removes the remaining porosity,
shrinking the component to its final specified
dimensions. The process is ideal for the high
volume production of small, thin-walled com-
Stage 1: Injection of A Stage 2: Injection of B Stage 3: Injection of A2 plex-shaped components, where machining
costs would be prohibitive.
FIGURE 1:The three stages of the sequential co-injection moulding The surface-engineering powder co-injec-
process for the surface engineering of a MlM component. tion process developed at Cranfield uses a
twin-barrelled injection-moulding machine.
The two barrels, Aand B, are oriented at right
angles and are connected by an exchange
valve to a single nozzle which feeds through
into the mould. The material from the A bar-
rel forms the surface-engineered skin of the
component and the barrel B feedstock forms
the component’s core.
The process for producing a surface-engi-
neered green body is as follows (Figure 1). In
step Al material from barrel A is injected
into a mould to form the skin of the mould-
ing. In step B the control valve is reposi-
tioned to allow injection of the core material
from barrel B. This secondary injection
forces the skin material to the outer parts of
the mould cavity by the ‘fountain effect’. In
I I
step A2 the valve is opened to barrel A for a
FlGURE 2: Examples of the possible shape short shot of material to complete the skin at
complexity of metal injection moulded the injection point. Change-over from barrel A
components. to barrel B and vice versa is accomplished by

30 MPR June 1999 0026-0657/99/$- see front matter 0 1999, Elsevier Science Ltd
All rights reserved
 FIGURE 3: view of the two barrels and the exchange nozzle on a twin-barrelled injection moulding
machine. The mould lies on the other side of the platen visible in the upper centre of the photograph.
- only moulded into required areas, and the bulk
FIGURE 4:Finite element model simulation of
the filling of a gear mould by the PCM
process. The co/ours indicate filling time.
setting a changeover position relative to the
stroke of the barrels.
The abilitv to control the thickness and
shape of the surface-engineered layer of a com-
ponent is crucial to the success of the process.
The relative quantity of material injected from
barrel A is one of the principal factors in deter-
mining the thickness of the surface engineered
layer. However, feedstock viscosity during cool-
ing in the mould, and hence injection time, effec-
tively controls the shape of the surface-engi-
neered layer allowing surface-engineering to be
maximized in the required component areas.
This can be illustrated using the example of
a gear moulding shown in Figure 4. Here the
surface engineering requirement is for wear
resistant material to be present in the teeth of
the gear but not at the long surface of the com-
ponent. The ideal PCM processing route for
32 MPR June 1999
such a component is a short injection time com-
bined with a low relative viscosity skin mix.
The skin feedstock is pushed to the outer edges
of the component, filling the teeth of the mould.
The teeth wear resistance is maximized whilst
the deposition of unwanted material on the
long face of the component is minimized. Sub-
millimetre surface-engineered layer thickness
on the long face of such components has been
shown to be relatively easy to achieve.
This example shows how using a powder
with improved wear resistance for the skin
layer can improve component performance.
However, PCM can also be used to improve the
economics of MIM component production. A
high powder cost MIM component can instead
be produced by PCM with the high cost powder
of the component being made up of a lower cost
powder. An example of one approach to achiev-
ing this is shown in Figure 5.
Future challenges
Current research in PCM at Cranfield is con-
centrating on two areas: modelling of the
moulding process for PCM and sintering of
PCM components.
Finite-element models are being used to
predict the shape of the skin layer in more
complex-shaped components. They have
shown that in order to achieve accurate con-
trol over the skin-layer morphology the ratio
of the viscosities of the skin and core feed-
stocks must be carefully controlled, i.e. feed-
stocks with tailored viscosities are required
for accurate PCM. The research group at
Cranfield has been working on characteriza-
tion and property prediction for MIM feed-
stocks with the end goal being the production
of guidelines for the composition of feedstocks
 Metal injection moulding
I
NTEREST in metal injection moulding
(MIM) at Cranfield grew out of long-
standing work on the injection moulding
of highly-filled thermoplastics, and fibre-
reinforced thermoplastics.
This research work was expanded to look
at the problem of producing short fibre rein-
forced components via MIM, and a system
was successfully developed using alumina
short fibres as the reinforcement. This
research area has more recently been
expanded to look at process issues along the
entire MIM route, notably binder removal
and carbon control in sintering.
Current MIM research at Cranfield is
concentrated on two related issues: binder
systems and binder burn out. Many of the
FIGURE 5: An example of surface-engineering
by PCM to decrease the component powder
costs. The surface layer of a gear component
has been produced using an Osprey 316L mas-
ter alloy mixed with OM grade carbonyl iron. The
encapsulated core of the component is cheaper
pure carbonyl iron. The micrographs show the
skin to core interface. (a) The component after
partial sintering. The masteralloy is visible as the
larger spherical particulates. (b) The component
after sintering at higher temperature. The mas-
teralloy components have diffused to form 316L
in the skin layer.
with tailored viscosities for PCM. The viscosi-
ty of an MIM feedstock is a function of the
solid loading up to the critical volume fraction
of powder, the nature of the binding polymer,
the specific heat capacity and thermal con-
ductivity of the total mix - which is a function
of the characteristics of the individual mix
elements - and the pressure-volume-temper-
ature characteristics of the feedstock. The
34 MPR June 1999
at Cranfield 1
binder and debinding systems currently used
in industry and research will not meet with
future environmental-protection regulations:
notably the common use of solvent extraction
in multi-component binder systems.
The research group at Cranfield has
started to concentrate on moulding and
extrusion technology using more environ-
mentally friendly binder systems with non-
toxic binder removal steps. Water-based
MIM and extrusion is one obvious method.
The bottle-neck of the MIM process is still
the binder removal step. Hence the goal of
this area of research is to decrease the envi-
ronmental impact of MIM debinding while
at the same time decreasing the process
time of that processing step.
challenge is to reduce this complex data into a
set of routine measures that can be used to
characterize feedstocks for PCM.
The second research area is that of skin
and core compatibility for the PCM process.
The surface-engineered surface layer and the
core of the component must possess similar
time-temperature sintering characteristics in
order for a highly dense component to be suc-
cessfully produced. There are a wide variety of
methods of changing the sintering behaviour
of powders to satisfy this criterion. A simple
example is that shown in Figure 5, where the
masteralloy-carbonyl iron mix possess an
almost identical sintering profile to that of
pure carbonyl iron. Sintering rates can be
increased by using fine particles, liquid or
super-solidus liquid phase sintering. Similarly
they can be retarded by using coarser particles
or the addition of non-sinterable rigid inclu-
sions to the feedstock. At Cranfield research
into sintering control is ongoing for the more
common MIM materials such as 316L.
Summary
The Cranfield team has shown that PCM is a
viable process for the manufacture of surface-
engineered components, and that PCM can
lead to cost savings over the standard MIM
process. By ensuring optimized mould filling
conditions and compatible sintering character-
istics between skin and core materials, high
quality components of complex geometry can
be produced. The team believes that the abili-
ty to surface engineer as part of the MIM cycle
provides a further incentive for the additional
exploitation of this fast growing technology.
Contact: Dr Jejj%ey Alcock,
Cranfield University,
Building 61, School of Industrial and
Manufacturing Science,
Cranfield, Beds MK43 OAL, UK.
Tel: +44-1234-750111, ext: 2385.
Fax: +44-1234-752473.
E-mail: advanced_materials@cranfield.ac.uk
URL: www.cranfield.ac.uk/sims/materialsl
processing/ n