Powder Injection Molding of TiC-10%Ni-10%Mo Cermet

TiC-10%Ni-10%Mo cermet was fabricated by powder injection molding method with TiC,Ni and Mo powders as starting materials. The influence of debinding and sintering parameters on the debinding rate,binder loss ratio,quality of a brown compact and properties of an as-sintered cermet was evaluated systematically. The results reveal that the proposed debinding process consisted of initial solvent debinding in heptane and a subsequent thermal debinding as following: heating from room temperature to 60 ℃ at 3.5 ℃·min-1,then heating to 300 ℃ at 2.2 ℃·min-1 plus a 20 min holding and final heating to 600 ℃ at 3.3 ℃·min-1 plus another 30 min holding. The optimized sintering process was proposed as (1 500-1 530) ℃×2 h,by which the sintered cermet could get relative density over 99%,hardness over 95 HRA and average grain size less than 5 μm.