Improvement of the dimensional stability of powder injection molded compacts by adding swelling inhibitor into the debinding solvent

Defects are frequently found in powder injection molded (PIM) compacts during solvent debinding due to the swelling of the binders. This problem can be alleviated by adjusting the composition of the debinding solvent. In this study, 10 vol pct swelling inhibitors were added into heptane, and the in-situ amounts of swelling and sagging of the specimen in the solvent were recorded using a noncontacting laser dilatometer. The results show that the addition of ethanol, 2-propanol, 1-butanol, and 1-pentanol reduced the amounts of swelling by 31, 21, 17, and 11 pct, respectively. This was because the small molecule alcohols, which do not dissolve paraffin wax (PW) or stearic acid (SA) in the binder system, could diffuse easily into the specimen and increased the portion of the swelling inhibitor inside. The amount of the extracted PW and SA also decreased, but only by 8.3, 6.1, 4.3, and 2.4 pct, respectively. The solubility parameters of 1-bromopropane (n-PB) and ethyl acetate (EA) are between those of heptane and alcohols, and they also yielded a slight reduction in the amounts of swelling by 6 and 11 pct, respectively. These results suggest that to reduce defects caused by binder swelling during solvent debinding, alcohols with high solubility parameters can be added into heptane without sacrificing significantly on the debinding rate.