WARM FORMING OF IRON POWDER WITH AND WITHOUT ADMIXED LUBRICANT

Abstract

This paper reports the outcomes of a comparative study between warm forming of metal powder with and without using admixed lubricant. A lab-scale warm forming rig was designed and fabricated which enabled the generation of green compacts at elevated temperature. The feedstock from iron powder ASC 100.29 was prepared by mechanically mixing the powder with 0.4 wt% and 0.8 wt% of zinc stearate for 10, 30, and 60 minutes in the case of warm forming with lubricant. For the case of forming without lubricant, only iron powder ASC 100.29 was used as feedstock. The prepared feedstock was formed by varying the temperature from 30ºC to 200ºC to generate green compacts for the purpose of mechanical testing and microstructure evaluation. The results revealed that the properties of green compacts are affected by the existence of admixed lubricant as well as forming temperature. Green compacts having high strength and more homogenous grain distributions were obtained by using admixed lubricant.