TheDeicide
Well-Known Member
The rods would be a problem from my knowledge. I'm not 100% sure we could get uniformity. I work in pressed metal powders. We get premixed material from a company and we compress it under tons of force and then we sinter it in a furnace to burn out lubricants and such. The job I'm at now we make parts for the automotive industry and have to hold tolerances varying from a couple dozen microns or so to about 100 on larger stuff. The company I worked at before made a steel part that was essentially a 5 inch long rod. Being able to have consistency in the metallurgical properties for our purpose might be a problem. The compress ability of the mixture comes into play too. To get high densities requires heated dies and special mix. This stuff would be somewhat porous which could be an issue. Powder metal has come a long way, but I'm not 100% sure one way or another. Being able to make a longer piece and keeping the density dispersed might not be possible. This would also likely be a micro project. I don't know how feasible mass production could be in the machining portion.
