Abstract

Today, there is a universal increasing demand for the advanced materials in order to obtain the desirable properties. Ordinary methods cannot meet the production requirements of complex and accurate dimension instances. That is why the need for unique manufacturing techniques is growing every day. Powder Metallurgy (PM) is a continually and rapidly evolving manufacturing technology embracing most metallic and non-metallic materials with a wide variety of shapes. Although the process has existed for more than 100 years, over the past quarter century it has become widely recognized as a superior way of producing high-quality parts for a diversity of important applications. This success is due to the privileges the process offers over other metal forming technologies, advantages in material utilization, shape complexity, near-net-shape dimensional control, among others. Furthermore, some characteristic of the product (e.g. combination of different kinds of materials and chemical constituents, control over microstructure, control over porosity etc.) can be created by starting from a powder feedstock, which would be very difficult or sometimes impossible in conventional processing.