Injection Molding of TC4 Titanium Alloy Using Quasi-Spherical Powders
TIAN Hanqing, CHEN Gang, LIU Chang, WEI Jinghao, HAN Longxiao, QIN Mingli, QU Xuanhui
Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Materials Genome Engineering, Institute for Advanced Material and Technology,
University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing 100083, China
Injection molding of the TC4 titanium alloy was investigated using the low-cost hydrogenationdehydrogenation (HDH) powders modified by jet-milled (JMed) as the raw material. Three types of powders, including HDH, jet-milled (JMed) HDH and gas-atomized (GA), were compared in terms of maximum loading capacity, sintered density, impurity content, microstructure, and mechanical properties. Results showed that the particle sphericity of the JMed powder was significantly improved and thus enhanced the maximum loading capacity (volume fraction) by 6%, and exhibited higher sintering densification, as compared to the original HDH powders. After sintering at 1300 ℃ for 2 h, the density of the sintered parts using the JMed powders is 98.3%, higher than that using the original HDH powders (95.3%), while equivalent to that using the GA powders (98.4%). The room temperature mechanical properties of the sintered parts using the JMed powders showed the tensile strength of 904.2 MPa, yield strength of 809.1 MPa, elongation of 8.14% respectively, much better than those using the original HDH powders. Furthermore, the strength of the sintered parts using the JMed powders demonstrated equivalent performance to that using the GA powders, indicating the quasi-spherical TC4 powders exhibiting a great potential for engineering applications.