High Performance Titanium Alloy Compacts by Advanced Powder Processing Techniques

In this paper, two kinds of advanced powder processing techniques such as Metal Injection Molding (MIM) and Direct Laser Forming (DLF) were introduced to fabricate complex shaped Ti alloy parts which have been widely used for various industrial and medical applications because of their excellent characteristics of low density, high corrosion resistance and high biocompatibility but need high processing cost because of poor workability. The MIM process has been tried to strengthen Ti-6Al-4V alloy compacts by addition of fine Mo, Fe and Cr powders, and enhanced tensile strength of 1030 MPa with 15.1 % elongation was obtained by an addition of 4 mass%Cr because of the microstructural modification but also the solution strengthening in beta phase. DLF process has been tried to improve the honeycomb porous structure from Ti-6Al-7Nb powder material, and the honeycomb structure with 300 m holes showed good mechanical compatibility and superb biocompatibility in osteoblasts culturing.