Reducing debinding time in thick components fabricated by powder injection molding: Paper presented at “7 th International Powder Metallurgy Conference and Exhibition” (TPM-7), 24–28 June 2014, Gazi University, Ankara, Turkey

Of the five steps in powder injection molding, namely feedstock formulation, mixing, injection, debinding and sintering, the one which markedly demands more time is debinding. Studying the effect of specimen thickness on debinding time in the current study, 316L stainless steel feedstock was exploited as the material for fabrication cylindrical specimens with varying thicknesses ranging from 2 to 10 mm. The thicker the specimen, the more time-consuming the debinding is. In addition, a novel method has been presented to produce thick components with large sections by powder injection molding, using preformed inserts in the injection stage. By using a wrought insert on which the feedstock is injected, the thickness of the injected section in need of debinding decreased while the whole thickness of the component was still large. Finally, defect-free specimens with diameter of 20 mm have been fabricated using inserts with different sizes, which resulted in dramatic reduction of debinding time from several days to only some hours. Moreover, it revealed that the interface of the insert and injected section was bonded properly, reaching more than 400 MPa of shear strength, depending on insert/part diameter ratio.