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/M 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.