Powder metallurgy in Belarus and global development trends

Abstract

The analysis of trends and prospects for the development of the industry on the materials of European and world congresses of powder metallurgy, publications in leading specialized foreign publications was carried out. The steady growth of the production of powder construction parts for the automotive industry, including using assembly technology during joint sintering, are noted in the developed countries. The production using MIM methods is constantly growing; micro MIM technology has emerged as a separate sub-industry, which allows manufacturing products with a mass of 0,1 g or less. HIP methods found its second wind: with them it became possible to obtain large-sized blanks from corrosion-resistant steels weighing up to 1000 kg, titanium and high-temperature alloys; the post HIPing technology is widely used to improve the quality of products obtained by additive technologies and important castings. With additive technologies, products weighing up to 100 kg are already being manufactured. The authors also formulated their own opinion about the prospects for the development of powder metallurgy in Europe and in the world, determined the development directions of the industry in Belarus and its influence on the development of world powder metallurgy. In particular, new grades of economically alloyed powder steels are developed. They make it possible to reduce the cost of mass structural parts without prejudice to their technical characteristics. For the same purpose, processes combined with hardening of sintering are optimized, and, in contrast to foreign analogues, endogas is used for cooling instead of nitrogen.