Influence of manufacturing process on soft-magnetic properties of iron powder

Abstract

Nowadays, a lot of electrical types of equipment use the alternating current with high frequency. Soft magnetic is the right choice to use in alternating current or high frequency because it can repeatedly be magnetized and demagnetized in a short time. The metallurgy process begins with the fabrication of the powder using a milling machine and ball milling thus produced an iron powder of 100 mesh size, then the powder was heated up to 600°C for an hour. The iron powder was binding by epoxy resin and compacted with a pressure variation 4, 5, 6 tons for an hour. The hardness testing uses Vickers test and microstructure observation by SEM (scanning electron microscopy). The result shows that the 6-ton of compact pressure has the highest hardness value of 41,22 VHN and produces the lowest porosity value of 18%. Hardness value increases while the porosity value decreases by the increasing of the compact pressure.