Twinning Induced Plasticity (TWIP) steels, are high manganese austenitic steels which have experienced in the last decade a growing interest due to their unique combination of strength and elongation Nevertheless, the problems presented along their current fabrication process (continuous casting) make complicated its production and commercialization. Powder metallurgy can be an attractive alternative route to solve those problems in certain components. In this work, Metal injection moulding (MIM) is explored as alternative fabrication route for TWIP steels with the additional benefit of reaching a near-theoretical densification. The feedstock of this study is composed by a metallic prealloyed Fe-Mn-C-Al-Si powder and a binder system based on wax-HDPE. Feedstock was optimized by studying different metallic loads. Proper proportion of powder and binder was determined in terms of mixing torque and melt flow index measurements. A two stage debinding process and sintering process under argon atmosphere to obtain the right microstructure were optimized.

Peer Reviewed