Ceramic Forming Process - Injection Molding

The following are some processing practices of our ceramic factory in the injection molding process of zirconia ceramics, hoping to provide reference for everyone.

Ceramic Injection Molding (CIM) is a new process for preparing ceramic components that combines polymer injection molding methods with ceramic preparation processes. The manufacturing process of ceramic precision injection molding mainly includes four steps:

(1) Preparation of injection feed: Mix, dry, and granulate appropriate organic carriers with ceramic powder at a certain temperature to obtain injection feed;

(2) Injection molding: The mixed injection mixture is heated in the injection molding machine and transformed into a viscous melt. It is high-speed injected into a metal mold at a certain temperature and pressure, cooled and solidified to the desired shape, and then demolded;

(3) Degreasing: By heating or other physical and chemical methods, the organic matter in the injection molding body is removed;

(4) Sintering: The degreased ceramic blank is densified and sintered at high temperature to obtain the required appearance, dimensional accuracy, and microstructure of the dense ceramic components.

Zirconia ceramic tube, ceramic needle, ceramic rod

The ceramic injection molding process has a series of outstanding advantages:

(1) The forming process has a high degree of mechanization and automation, high production efficiency, short forming cycle, high billet strength, and convenient management and control during the production process, making it easy to achieve large-scale production;

(2) It can form various small ceramic components with complex geometric shapes and special requirements in a near net manner, so that sintered ceramic products do not require machining or less processing, thereby reducing expensive ceramic processing costs;

(3) The formed ceramic products have high dimensional accuracy and surface smoothness. Therefore, this technology has been widely studied and applied both domestically and internationally, especially for the mass production of ceramic products with high dimensional accuracy and complex shapes. The use of ceramic powder injection molding has the most advantages.

Injection molding machine

Injection molding machines can produce special ceramic materials with small sizes and special shapes, and can generate ceramic plates and rods in bulk; Injection molding machines cannot produce special ceramic products with large size specifications!

In the 1980s, in order to meet the needs of the development of ceramic engines and the preparation of high-temperature ceramic components such as turbine rotors, the focus of ceramic injection molding research was on non oxide high-temperature ceramic components such as silicon nitride and silicon carbide, especially the injection molding preparation of Si3N4, SiC turbine rotors, blades, and sliding bearings for engines. At the same time, many high-performance and complex shaped high-temperature structural ceramic products were successfully prepared, Ceramic turbine rotors have been used in racing and military armored vehicles in Japan and the United States. At present, ceramic injection molding has been widely used for the molding of various ceramic powders and engineering ceramic products. Various precision ceramic parts prepared by this process have been used in aviation, automobile, machinery, energy, optical communication, life medicine and other fields.

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