Supercritical Debinding of Environmentally Friendly Inconel 718 Feedstock to Metal Injection Moulding Process

In the MIM process the debinding is a long, complicated and polluting step. The supercritical fluid debinding is a new method to reduce the time of debinding, the default of the pieces and the pollution. The goal of this study is to study the behaviour of an environmentally friendly feedstock of Inconel 718. For this, a binder formulation based on polyethylene glycol, because of is water debinding properties, and bio sourced polymer was made. Polylactic acid was investigated as bio sourced polymer. The debinding is realized with supercritical CO2 as solvent. The results were compared to the traditional debinding method using water at 60°C.