Copper base materials prepared by gel-casting process

Gel-casting process was developed as a new molding process in the field of copper base powder metallurgy to manufacture metal parts with excellent performance and complex shapes. Through changing the parameters of gel-casting process, such as dispersant and solid loading, the corresponding effects on the rheology of Cu slurries, molding and sintering behaviors were studied. The results show that the viscosity of Cu slurries was significantly reduced with an increase in dispersant. The most appropriate solid loading was found to be 61% and the sintering temperature was 910°C in these experiments. After the optimization of parameters of gel-casting process, copper composite parts with relatively high density and better properties were obtained.