Process Optimization of Manufacturing of Magnets by Electro Sinter Forging (ESF)

Sammanfattning: Interest in powder metallurgy processes is nowadays continuously increasing due to several reasons such as less heavy manufactured parts, economical advantages and greater concern in environmental sustainability related to production. Electro sinter forging, ESF, belongs to them, being a sintering technique characterized by high electric current intensity released for a very short lapse of time at low voltage on a powder green body, together with an applied load. After a brief description of the manufacturing process, its history and production background, relative density, hardness and load before tensile and compressive fracture are analyzed for disks sintered with different combinations of electric current intensity, sintering time and applied force. A statistical univariate and factorial analysis is then performed on the achieved results so to give them robustness and trying to and out an optimal combination of input parameters leading to optimized properties of the disks, later to become magnets.