Parts, produced by sintering, advantages and disadvantages

Recently, quantity of the parts and components produced by sintering has been little bit reduced. It happened by the reason that new melting methods were developed – such as electro-impulsive heating. But this technologies helped to avoid some disadvantages of the sintering method. Production of clean alloys and big blanks without pores became much easier.

Advantages and disadvantages

Sintering method successfully replaces stamping, cutting, casting and other types of machining. In some cases, it competes with them or complements them.

Most important advantages and benefits:

Significant reduction of the machining cost, up to its full exclusion.
Energy saving technologies are applied. Raw material is used at 97%, and for most of the processes this coefficient can reach 100%.
Production of parts by this method allows usage of the different many-component mixtures. When non-metals are mixed with metals and other substances, it is possible to obtain self-lubricating bearings, filters with different porosity, parts with adjustable permeability etc. In some cases, necessity of additional stages is being excluded.
Parts, produced by this method, have better characteristics (performance characteristics, technical, economical), if it is compared with the similar products, produced by traditional technologies.

However disadvantages:

High cost of raw materials.
Necessity to maintain whole process in special atmosphere.
Complexity of production of big parts.
To receive parts without admixtures it is required to have clean (100%) powder.

In conclusion, disadvantages of the sintering are not constantly active factors. As the developing is going on, this method can be applied in new areas. By sintering, it is easy to produce completely identical batches of parts, with very small deviation of sizes, for example, pistons and rod guides for shock absorbers production.