A method to rapidly determine the sintering process parameters of powder metallurgy by real-time resistivity monitoring

A new method, which is called the resistivity method, is applied in this paper to explore the optimum sintering parameters of powder metallurgy (PM) since general methods are always labor-intensive and time-consuming. This method can probe the resistivity of the powder metallurgy samples in real-time during the sintering process, to quickly estimate the change of the relative density, which consequently determine the properties of the sintered item. As an example, in this paper, copper/tungsten carbide (Cu/WC) composites and pure aluminum (Al) powder compacts are experimentally considered. As a result, for the Cu/WC composites, the highest value of relative density appeared at the holding time of 50 min where the sample has the lowest resistivity. For the Al compacts, the optimum sintering temperature is 450 °C, and the longer the holding time the better.