Effect of Intermediate Annealing Temperature on Response of Repressing to Densification of Pre-Alloyed Cr-Mo Steel

Increasing density is one of the important factors for producing high quality powder metallurgy (PM) parts, which has beneficial effect on mechanical properties. One of the common techniques for achieving this goal is double compacting, which seems to be a potentially attractive method in PM route, also for Cr-Mo alloyed-steels. The objective of this research was to investigate the effect of first compacting pressure and intermediate annealing temperature on attaining higher densities and minimum interconnected porosity for Cr-Mo pre-alloyed steel. The effect of mentioned parameters was studied by measuring density, transverse rupture strength and macrohardness of repressed samples. The results show that for each first compacting pressure, the density range of repressed samples increases with the increasing annealing temperature up to a certain limit, due to C dissolution which causes free porosity and further densification. Annealing temperatures higher than optimum one should be avoided, since too much carbon dissolution results in harder and less deformable compacts. On the other hand, with regard to repressed density and other resulted properties, the amount of first compacting pressure offers considerable advantage in obtaining higher level of density and consequently improved mechanical properties.