Production of sintered products

In the most common practice, the powder is cold-pressed to obtain an object with sufficient cohesion to allow it to be handled and transported to the sintering furnace.

For high mechanical properties, a high density, i.e. fairly low residual porosity, is sought in this operation.

Cold-pressed parts are particularly attractive and shiny, especially on their side faces in the case of uniaxial compression. They appear solid, but their mechanical strength is generally less than 10 MPa.

It's the sintering process that gives them their mechanical properties. It consists in heating the tablet to a temperature such that the powder grains weld together by atomic displacement in the solid state, or by a kind of brazing when there is a certain amount of liquid in the tablet during the operation.