Dr. Satyajit Banerjee

In addition to their flexibility, batch furnaces are popular because you run them only when you need them, and you can run different temperature profiles for different materials as you wish.

The cycle time for conventional debinding and sintering has been dramatically reduced by the creation of laminar gas flow inside a controlled retort. Adding controlled plasma before laminar gas-flow sintering enables this furnace to produce parts in half the time than conventional furnaces offer today.

The powder Metal Injection Molding (MIM) industry has grown from a $20 million per year curiosity in the late 1980s to an estimated $1 billion (in sales) industry in 2006, and it is continuing to grow at the rate of 8-15% per year. Industry pundits consider the technology to have matured because R&D spending is tapering off in the U.S., and more companies are venturing into manufacturing parts by MIM. In this article we will consider some of the developments that have made this growth possible and the reason this industry continues to grow.