Defect Detection of Metal Injection Modeling by Micro Computed Tomography
Metal injection molding (MIM) is a combination of metal powder and injection molding technology. The main advantage of this technology for material parts with small and complex shape is to manufacture cost-effective and high-volume products. The main processing steps include mixing, injection molding, debinding , sintering, and hot isostatic pressing (HIP) in order to reduce internal porosity of metals, then to improve mechanical properties. This study is based on non-destructive testing method to determine the possible defect inside the internal structure of the MIM parts. Three types of parts with and without HIP were evaluated investigated in this study. The micro computed tomography (Micro-CT) is used to scan these parts. Based the reconstructed section images from CT, the defects can be identified. It showed that with HIP the much of detects could be reduced. To conclude, Micro CT could be used to detect, in a non-destructive way, the internal detect within MIM parts can be found out in the micro-CT images, so that the manufacturing process could be modified to improve the quality of MIM parts.