Investigation of Deibinding and Sintering of 3Y-ZrO2 Gear Fabricated by Micro Powder Injection Molding
The rapid development of micro-system and its related products has caused an upsurge of micro components, and the micro powder injection molding is potential for its mass production. In this work, the solvent debinding mechanism of the in-house feedstock was studied. The influence of solvent debinding, thermal debinding and sintering on the micro gears was investigated. The weight loss of 3Y-ZrO2 micro gears ranging from 200 to 900μm were compared by using six types of solvent including ether mixture withanhydrous alcohol, petroleum ether, chloroform and are hexane etc. The thermal debinding scheme was determined based on the DSC and TGA results of the binder system. The effect of the heating rate on the micro gears was investigated. The experimental results showed that the petroleum ether mixture with anhydrous alcohol yielded the best debinding effect for the micro gears, which was controlled by diffusion and dissolution. Using the established debinding and sintering schedule, the defect free micro gears were successfully fabricated.