Powder metallurgy (PM) is the fabrication process of compacting metal powders to shape and sintering these compacts to yield the final material’s properties. The PM compaction process allows for complex geometries to be formed that would normally lead to long and expensive machining processes from wrought steels. Special alloy selection can allow for hardening of the microstructure during the sintering procedure. The sinter hardened (SH) alloys exhibit good mechanical properties along with good hardenability and dimensional stability and may be a suitable replacement for wrought steels where low distortion from heat treatment or microstructural control is required. In this study, it was found for a complex geometry coupler application, a SH alloy could successfully replace an austenitizing heat treatment process with a low carbon steel. The low carbon steel was found to have micro heterogeneities from heat treatment that lead to premature failure in the application. Dimensional distortion and production variance were also of concern with the low carbon steel. The SH material demonstrated acceptable physical properties, hardness and microstructural uniformity to solve the concerns associated with processing of the low carbon steel coupler. Post processing optimization also added to the life performance of the coupler by tailoring the final microstructure to mating components.

For annealing, brazing or sintering, furnace atmospheres help ensure that metals thermal processors obtain the results they need. Hydrogen-containing atmospheres are used to protect surfaces from oxidation, and to ensure satisfactory thermal processing results. Hydrogen-containing atmospheres make thermal processing more forgiving because the hydrogen improves heat conduction and actively cleans heated surfaces – reducing oxides and destroying surface impurities. For powder based fabrication such as P/M, MIM or binder-jet metal AM, the use of a hydrogen-containing thermal processing atmosphere ensures the highest possible density of the sintered parts without necessitating the use of post-processing techniques. Users of pure hydrogen or hydrogen-containing gas blend atmospheres often struggle with hydrogen supply options. Hydrogen storage may create compliance problems due to its flammability and high energy content. Hydrogen generation enables hydrogen use without hydrogen storage issues. Deployment of hydrogen generation can ease the addition of thermal processing atmospheres to new and existing processing facilities.

The powder injection molding process is used to manufacture parts with complex shapes and high production demand. In orthodontic and medical applications, in which high hardness and corrosion resistance are required, 17-4 PH stainless steel is used mainly by this forming technique. The sintering atmosphere is responsible for controlling the chemical reactions that occur during material densification and is critical to the ultimate product quality. This research evaluated the influence of the sintering atmosphere on the hardness and corrosion resistance of this type of steel. The removal of the primary binder was conducted by chemical extraction by using a solvent with less environmental impact which has proved to be suitable for this purpose. The subsequent binder thermal extraction was performed by heating at temperatures of 250 and 450 °C and afterwards to 900 °C to initiate sintering. Nitrogen, vacuum and hydrogen atmospheres were used with sintering temperatures at 1250 and 1330 °C with 30 and 60 minute time step. It was shown that the densities achieved in hydrogen and vacuum atmospheres are similar and suitable by the regulations, whereas the nitrogen atmosphere resulted in lower performance. The hardness and corrosion resistance obtained with the use of hydrogen and vacuum atmospheres were also higher than those obtained for samples sintered in the nitrogen atmosphere.