Method of making cermet or cemented carbide powder
AssigneeSandvik Intellectual Property AB
InventorsCarl-Johan Maderud, Johan Sundstrom, Magnus Ekelund, Sven Englund
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Abstract
The present disclosure relates to a method of making a powder of dense and spherically shaped cemented carbide or cermet granules. The present disclosure also relates to a powder produced by the method and use of said powder in additive manufacturing such as 3D printing by the binder jetting technique. Furthermore, the present disclosure relates to a Hot Isostatic Pressing (HIP) process for manufacturing a product by using said powder.
Claims18
A method of making a powder of dense and spherically shaped cermet or cemented carbide granules, wherein the method comprises the steps of:
- (a) forming spherically shaped granules comprising metal, hard constituents and organic binder;
- (b) mixing said spherically shaped granules with a sintering inhibitor powder to form a mixture of spherically shaped granules and sintering inhibitor powder, wherein the sintering inhibitor powder includes graphite powder;
- (c) loading the mixture of spherically shaped granules and sintering inhibitor powder in a furnace chamber;
- (d) heat-treating the mixture of spherically shaped granules and sintering inhibitor powder obtained in step (b) in the furnace chamber at a sintering temperature to remove organic binder from the mixture of spherically shaped granules and sintering inhibitor powder and to sinter the hard constituents with the metal in each of the spherically shaped granules and thereby forming an intermediate product of a mixture of sintered dense spherically shaped granules and sintering inhibitor powder, each dense spherically shaped granule of the intermediate product of the mixture of sintered dense spherically shaped granules and sintering inhibitor powder having a porosity inside that is less than 5 vol %;
- (e) unloading the intermediate product of the mixture of sintered dense spherically shaped granules and sintering inhibitor powder from the furnace chamber;
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- (f) separating the sintering inhibitor powder from the intermediate product of the mixture of the sintered dense spherically shaped granules and sintering inhibitor powder, wherein the powder of dense and spherically shaped cermet or cemented carbide granules is formed, wherein the sintering inhibitor powder comprises carbon.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.