Powder metallurgy

This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove these template messages) This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Powder metallurgy" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (April 2009) (Learn how and when to remove this message) This article may require copy editing for grammar, style, cohesion, tone, or spelling. You can assist by editing it. (April 2024) (Learn how and when to remove this message) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Powder metallurgy (PM) is a term covering a wide range of ways in which materials or components are made from metal powders. PM processes can reduce or eliminate the need for subtractive processes in manufacturing, lowering material losses and reducing the cost of the final product.

Powder metallurgy is also used to make unique materials impossible to get from melting or forming in other ways. A very important product of this type is tungsten carbide. Tungsten carbide is used to cut and form other metals and is made from tungsten carbide particles bonded with cobalt. It is very widely used in industry for tools of many types and globally ~50,000 tonnes per year is made with powder metallurgy^{[citation needed]}. Other products include sintered filters, porous oil-impregnated bearings, electrical contacts and diamond tools.

Since the advent of industrial production-scale metal powder-based additive manufacturing in the 2010s, selective laser sintering and other metal additive manufacturing processes are a new category of commercially important powder metallurgy applications.