With financial backing from, among others, Swedish powder metal giant Höganäs and the Swedish Government, assistant professor Roland Stolt is heading a two year project at the School of Engineering of the University of Jönköping in southern Sweden entitled “Design of powder metallurgical components”.
The aim is to complement, rather than compete with the Global PM Property Database, first published three years ago after an unprecedented co-operative effort between the European Powder Metallurgy Association, the Japan Powder Metallurgy Association and America’s Metal Powder Industries Federation.
However, Dr Stolt said: “The PM database and e-learning resource do not address how to find and specify the requirements of the PM part being designed. Depending on how the manufacturing process is carried out, the resulting properties can differ greatly from those found in the PM database.
“It is important, therefore, not only to specify the material and the minimum required density on the design drawing, but also to include all the properties needed for the part to serve successfully without unexpected failures.
The guidelines are expected to serve as an aid to structure s part’s specification process so that no important properties are overlooked, he said. “The intention is to address only steel parts in high performance applications where wear-and-tear is an important issue.”
The project will cost €200 000 over its two-year course and Dr Stolt is actively seeking candidate parts for inclusion. “I am currently helping out with specifications for three different components, and I have also placed a technology offering on the Enterprise Europe Network [...] where I am offering to help with the design of high performance PM parts, provided I can include the experiences in the Guidelines”.