In recent years, in order to manufacture metals and alloys that can be used for mass production of micro-parts and micro-structure surfaces, the MIM industry has developed micro-metal injection moulding process (mu-MIM). Mu-MIM greatly improves the micro-applications of metals and alloys, such as new materials with high temperature stability, strength and toughness, and thermal conductivity and magnetism.

In addition, compared with plastic micro injection moulding, the bimetal production process developed by mu-MIM enables two different metal materials to be joined together (bimetal co-injection) in injection moulding.

Today, NO.2 Machinery introduces the two processes to you.

1. 2C-MIM (Two-Component MIM)

As a method of manufacturing bimetallic parts, 2C-MIM (Two-Component MIM) process has been developed. Its main advantage is in a production process, two materials with different properties can be directly combined to reduce the subsequent joining operations (such as welding, riveting, fastening assembly, etc.).

2C-MIM manufacturable parts range includes hollow parts with complex internal structure and flexible disassembly components.

The aim of all the studies is to produce functionally enhanced engineering parts at a favorable cost. For wear-prone parts, only the key parts such as the friction surface can be strengthened locally with harder or more wear-resistant materials. For other position, materials with relatively low cost can be used.

To manufacture bimetallic parts, it is not enough to simply understand the shape of the two injection materials. The key is that the two materials must be sintered in the same furnace and sintering atmosphere. Because the shrinkage of two parts is different during sintering, it may lead to delamination or cracking. In addition, when harmful phases are formed, alloying elements will also diffuse along the boundary, which will reduce the performance of the material.

By coordinating the processing factors, the quality of 2C-MIM parts can be optimized. Because of its unique ability, it can make parts with different material properties without any assembly work. Therefore, 2C-MIM process will certainly expand the application market of MIM industry.