Influence of mechanical activation of steel powder on its properties

It has been studied properties of stainless steel based powders after mechanical activation using planetary ball milling technique. It have been shown that after one minute mechanical activation porosity of sintered steel is less than 5%, which is less than the porosity of the sintered steel powder without mechanical activation. The sample without activation has austenite state, which changes after activation toaustenite and ferrite mixtures. X-ray analysis confirmed that the mechanical activation leads to a change in the phase state of the samples: the samples without activation of the FCC structure (γ-Fe), after activation - FCC (γ-Fe) and BCC (α-Fe). The hardness increases at increasing activation time from 800 MPa for the sample without mechanical activation to 1250 MPa for the sample with the activation time of 10 minutes.