Inductive hot-pressing of titanium and titanium alloy powders

Inductive hot-pressing is a field-assisted sintering process (FAST) in which an electrical current is used to enhance the densification of the powder. Inductive hot-pressing could be employed to enable titanium powder to reach a higher density in less time than the pressing and sintering process. In this study, titanium and titanium alloy powders with different features were processed by means of inductive hot-pressing. The influence of processing temperature on density, microstructure, quantity of interstitial elements and hardness was investigated. Generally, practically fully dense materials were obtained without any carbon pick-up, even if the materials were in contact with the graphite matrix during processing. Nevertheless, there was an increment of the nitrogen content and some oxygen pick-up, especially for the powders with smaller particle size. Hardness is not significantly affected by the pressing temperature, but it strongly depends on the amount of interstitials. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.