Ceramic Injection Molding (CIM) Gives Ceramic Molding One More Option
Ceramic injection molding (CIM) is the main branch of powder injection molding (PIM) technology, is developed on the basis of polymer injection molding technology, is a polymer injection forming method and ceramic preparation process combined to develop a new process to prepare ceramic parts. For the mass production of ceramic products with high size accuracy and complex shape, using ceramic powder injection molding is the most advantageous.
Merit:
1.The Forming process has the characteristics of high degree of mechanization and automation, high production efficiency, short forming cycle, high billet strength, and its process can be accurately controlled (program control), easy to achieve large-scale, large-scale production;
2.Can shape a variety of complex geometric shapes and special requirements of small ceramic parts, so that the sintering ceramic products do not need machining or less processing, in order to reduce the expensive ceramic processing cost;
3.The formed ceramic products have extremely high dimensional accuracy and surface finish.
Deficiencies:
One-time equipment investment and processing cost is high, only suitable for mass production and use.
Process flow:
1.Preparation of injection feed: the appropriate organic carrier and ceramic powder are mixed, dried and granted at a certain temperature to obtain the feed for injection;
2.Mold design: The mold design of CIM technology mainly considers the flow control of feeding in the mold cavity during injection forming. Because most of the CIM products are small size parts with complex shape and high precision requirements, which requires the careful design and arrangement of the position of the feed inlet, the length of the length of the flow channel and the exhaust hole. Of course, mold design requires a clear understanding of the feeding rheological properties, mold cavity temperature and residual stress distribution, in addition, computer simulation technology will play an important role in the design of powder injection molding mold.
3.Injection molding: the injection mixture is heated and converted into a sticky melt in the injection molding machine, injected into the metal mold at high speed under a certain temperature and pressure, cooled and solidified into the billet of the desired shape, and then demaged;
4.Degreasing: remove the organic matter by heating or other physical and chemical methods;
5.Sintering: compact the skim ceramic billet at high temperature to obtain the required appearance shape, size accuracy and microstructure.
Process features:
1.Can directly form a variety of complex geometric shapes and special requirements of small ceramic parts, so that after the sintering of ceramic products do not need to be machining or less processing, so as to reduce the expensive ceramic processing cost.
2.High degree of mechanization and automation, short forming cycle, only one tenth of ten to one hundred percent of the forming time, the strength of the billet is high, can be automated production, the management and control in the production process is also very convenient, suitable for mass production.
3.Due to the good fluidity of binder, the density of injection blank is quite uniform.
4.Because of the uniform mixing of powder and binder in the powder, the gap between powder is very small, and the shrinkage characteristics in the sintering process are basically the same, so the density of each parts is uniform, the geometric size accuracy and the surface finish are high.
Apply:
Ceramic injection molding has been widely used in the molding of various ceramic powders and various engineering ceramic products. All kinds of precision ceramic parts prepared by this process have been used in aviation, automobile, machinery, energy, communication, life medicine and other fields.
