Production of business machine components by powder metallurgy methods

1. A powder metallurgy process has been developed, and is now used on a large scale in industry, for the production of business machine components which requires far less labor than conventional machining and ensures a much higher metal utilization efficiency. In the period of the Ninth Five-Year Plan the adoption of this process enabled a saving of more than 3 million rubles to be achieved. 2. A study was made of the effect of a number of processing parameters upon variations in quality of products. It is shown that, of the various powder mixing units investigated, the attritor gives the greatest, and the blade mixer the least, homogeneity of powder. The homogeneity of a mixture is strongly affected by the duration of mixing, the relative amounts of the mixture components, and the relative particle sizes of the components. 3. It is demonstrated that variations in processing conditions (sintering temperature and time) have a pronounced effect upon variations in the properties and dimensions of finished parts. 4. It has been established that the stability of the process and the quality of business machine components mass-produced by this process are satisfactory when use is made of automatic presses and continuous electric furnaces with accurate control of temperature.