Application of gel forming in ceramic plunger products

Ceramic plunger has high wear resistance, corrosion resistance, impact resistance, etc., has been widely used in medical equipment, environmental engineering, petroleum, chemical, food and other industries.

At present, the ceramic plunger in the industry generally adopts dry pressing, isostatic pressing and injection molding to form the blank, but due to the blank size and shape difficult to accurately control, low production efficiency, difficult to achieve automatic operation, large processing allowance, processing cost is relatively high factors, has been plagued by the rapid development of the industry.

Gel forming refers to the constant position of particles in the suspended body, and the suspended body changes from liquid to solid by the force between particles or the properties of some carriers inside the suspended body. Gel forming technology successfully combine powder molding process and organic polymer chemistry, to join the ceramic slurry, functioning monomer molecules through the preparation of low viscosity high solid ceramic slurry, reoccupy add catalyst or heating or cooling cause organic molecules in the slurry crosslinking polymerization to form a three-dimensional network using molecules formed in situ curing of 3 d mesh structure fixed ceramic particles in situ, The formation of more dense than traditional ceramics without pores of the body.

The gel diagram is shown below：

Gel molding has the following advantages:

1. Wide range of molding method, can prepare single material and composite materials;

2. Parts with complex shapes can be prepared, and their sizes are basically unlimited;

3. High green strength, green processing; Sintering shrinkage stability, saving machining time.

4. The blank has uniform structure and high strength. Compact texture, less surface defects, easier to meet the requirements of finish;

We have tested the performance of plungers with the same specifications and different molding methods. The bending strength of gel molding plunger can reach 1396Mpa, which is nearly 20% higher than that of isostatic molding plunger. There are a few pores on the surface of isostatic pressure plunger, but no pores on the surface of gel formed plunger. The plunger of the two molding methods is polished in the same way, and the effect is shown in the figure below:

To sum up, gel plunger has more advantages compared with other molding methods and is more competitive in the subsequent market competition.