Influence of density on Al-Cu composition during compaction process

Powder metallurgy is a technology used for producing machine parts and oil impregnated bearings from a metal powder. Since highly accurate products can be
efficiently mass-produced, the powder metallurgy is indispensable particularly in
automobile industry .In general, a mixed powder including a metal powder is moulded by
compression and the resultant green compact is then dewaxed. Subsequently, for
example, in an alloy based powder metallurgy, the compact is sintered at a temperature of
about 5500C and in this sintering process, the mixed metal powder forms an alloy, thereby
increasing the strength of the compact. A cutting operation is then performed on the
resultant sintered compact. Metal powders are produced in various methods such as
atomization, shotting, stamping and ball milling. Spherical and dendritic metal powders
are produced by atomization methods and flake shaped metal powders are produced by
ball milling method. Milling is the main method for production of aluminium and bronze
powders. For the investigation purpose a quantity of copper powder is added to
aluminium powder and mixed well by using pot mill to get homogeneous mixture. The
aim of this paper is to establish the correlation among flow rate, compaction and sintering
process and densities of compact of 3 % of Cu in Al.