Characterization and Properties of Nickel Powder and Carbon Powder Mixture

This project is planned to provide new metal powders (mixture) with better
properties compared to pure powders. P/M additive is a small amount of material or
powder that normally being mixed into the base powder in order to improve certain
property of P /M sintered part. P 1M is one of a metal fabrication technique which
involves three main stages, i.e. mixing, compaction and sintering. The P/M
technique allows the blending (or mixing) of additives to the base powder mix prior
to compacting and sintering of parts. Nickel powder as the base powder and graphite
powder as the additive were used in the study. The objective of this project is to
study the homogeneity, compressibility and sintering of the powder mixture. The
homogeneity of the mixture was determined by using scanning electron microscope
(SEM) whilst the compressibility of the mixture was determined based on the
compressibility curve produced. The sintered properties were determined from the
sintered density curve as well. From this study, the powder mixture was found
homogeneous. Compressibility of mixed powders was increased with pressure. The
maximum green density and sintered density were 6.66 g/cm3 and 7.43 g/cm3
respectively.