Powder Metallurgy and Precious Metals: State of the Art and Future Developments

Abstract:

Precious metals are widely used in a variety of different industry mainly for their inertness and their intrinsic value. This latter, is also the reason to pursue time and material saving technologies, reducing scraps and metal losses. Powder Metallurgy offers some interesting and effective alternative to traditional precious metals forming, aiming either to a performance improvement (in terms of cost, time, complexity) or to a cost reduction. The ever increasing availability of metal based alloys with advanced features, supplied in powder form, opens the doors to the use of alternative sintering techniques, borrowed from smelting sectors. Powder Metallurgy applied to precious metals processing makes it possible to create both unconventional shapes and so-far unexplored alloys, using techniques already introduced in other ferrous and non ferrous metals processing. In this paper Field Assisted Sintering Techniques (FAST), Metal Injection Moulding (MIM) and Additive Manufacturing of precious powders are examined as avant-garde processes to obtain near net shape metal parts.

• Periodical: Key Engineering Materials (Volume 682)
• Pages: 239-244
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.4028/www.scientific.net/KEM.682.239
• Online since: February 2016
• Authors: Marco Actis Grande*, Ilaria Forno
• Keywords: Jewellery, Powder metallurgy, Precious Metals, Sintering

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