Titanium Powder Metallurgy

{text:bookmark-start} Titanium powder metallurgy What is powder metallurgy (PM) and why do we use it? {text:bookmark-end} PM techniques are used to fabricate a wide variety of components. Typically a material, mostly metals, is reduced to a powdered form, compacted into the required shape and then sintered. After sintering, the component can be further machined as necessary. Powder metallurgy products are mostly used in the automotive and aerospace industries although every modern household will have some appliance which makes use of a component produced using PM methods. PM is used to produce products at high volume (mass production) and low costs. The industry is economically viable, even though the tooling required to produce such a product along with the powder, is very expensive. Production can be automated if necessary. The metals used to make the powder are often scrap metal from another product. PM products are net or near net shape and the production method produces close to no waste material. To produce powder metallurgy products through any other production method are either very expensive or impossible and since no melt is encountered during production of PM parts, all problems and requirements associated with liquid to solid phase changes of a material can be ignored. Products unique to PM are tungsten carbide, high speed tool steels, super alloys and self lubricating bearings. Why Titanium? Titanium is a widely used material, especially in the aerospace industry. Successful production of titanium products, using powder metallurgy (PM) techniques, are more economical and less time intensive than the current production techniques. The titanium industry currently makes use of the conventional production methods, melting, milling and machining, which are very costly.
“95% of titanium used today is produced using the extraction process developed by Wilhelm Kroll” {text:bibliography-mark} . “Production of titanium today takes 16 times