DIRECT METAL FABRICATION OF PARTS

摘要

A method of directly fabricating metal parts with surface features only requires first preparing a mold (50) of the desired metal part. A powder ble nd is poured into the mold (20), which includes a base metal, a lower melting temperature alloy of the base metal, and a polymer binder. The mold containi ng the powder blend is heated until the polymer binder melts and adheres the metal particles to form a green part (24). The green part is removed from th e mold (30) and placed in a crucible, and loose ceramic powder is packed aroun d the part to support it (34). The supported green part is then heated as need ed to vaporize the binder and consolidate the part via liquid phase sintering (36). Once cool, the consolidated part can be machined to meet precise dimensional tolerances, if necessary (40).