Developing a Mold and a Method for Compacting Tungsten Powders and Tungsten-Based Composite Powders

The industrial technology which has been used since the beginning of the last century to make products from tungsten powders is still complicated and involves multiple operations. The technology is time-consuming because engineering studies that determine the parameters of the operations of compacting, sintering, welding, and shaping the tungsten compacts need to be performed before the first large batch of commercial products can be made. A factorial experiment showed that these operations can be made less labor-intensive by constructing regression relations for the density of the powder, sample weight, and the forces in the compaction process. New designs of molds have been developed together with a new method of compacting tungsten powder.