During the past two decades, Metal Injection Molding(MIM) has become a very competitive technology to fabricate small, precise and complex-shaped parts in large quantities. In this research, the applicability of MIM technology in the mass-production of the high precision fuze parts to save manufacturing cost was investigated. The water-atomized 17-4PH stainless steel powder, one of the best corrosion-resistant high strength materials, was injection-molded into real-shape fuze part and flat

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... le specimens. The injection-molded parts were thermally debound in hydrogen gas flow without solvent extraction. Sintering of the debound parts was carried out in vacuum at temperatures ranging from 1150℃ to 1370℃. The sintering behavior, mechanical properties, dimensional precision, corrosion resistance of the MIMed 17-4PH stainless parts were investigated. It was found that almost all the properties of the MIMed parts were comparable to those of the mechanically machined parts. Also, actual military field tests using both MIMed and mechanically machined fuze parts were performed as well and were found to be very successful.