At a time when the profit margin of the manufacturing industry is squeezed by fluctuations in raw material prices and rising labor costs, powder metallurgy technology has become the "life-saving straw" of many enterprises with the dual advantage of "cost reduction + efficiency increase". Its performance in cost control and production efficiency improvement far exceeds that of traditional processing technology, injecting new vitality into the development of the industry.

From the perspective of cost, the "near-net forming" process of powder metallurgy can be called the "ceiling" of material utilization.In traditional cutting processing, metal materials go through turning, milling, planing, grinding and other processes, and the waste rate is often as high as 30%-50%. Especially for high-value metals such as copper and titanium, a large amount of waste directly pushes up the production cost. Powder metallurgy uses metal powder as raw material and directly manufactures parts close to the shape of the final product through mold molding. The material utilization rate can reach more than 95%, and some parts with simple structures can even achieve 100% utilization. Take the production of automobile engine valve seats as an example. Using powder metallurgy technology, the cost of single materials can be reduced by 25%-30%. Based on the annual output of 100,000 pieces, it can save more than one million yuan in raw material costs every year.

The improvement of production efficiency is also significant. The traditional process of manufacturing complex structural parts requires multiple machining sequences, a long production cycle and high requirements for operators' skills.Powder metallurgy greatly simplifies the production steps through the core process of "one-time molding + sintering". Take the micro gears in electronic equipment as an example, traditional processing requires 5-6 processes and takes 2-3 days; while powder metallurgy adopts metal injection molding (MIM) process, which can achieve mass production, and the production cycle of a single batch of parts is shortened to 12-24 hours, and there is no need for a large number of subsequent finishing. In addition, the degree of automated production of powder metallurgy is high, and a production line only needs 2-3 operators to monitor, which reduces labor input by more than 50% compared with traditional processing, further reducing labor costs.

In the mass production scenario, the advantages of cost reduction and efficiency increase of powder metallurgy are more prominent. The person in charge of a hardware accessories enterprise said that powder metallurgy is usedAfter the process of producing the door lock cylinder, not only the material waste rate was reduced from 40% to less than 5%, and the production efficiency was improved by 3 times, but also due to the high consistency of parts, the subsequent quality inspection and rework cost was reduced, and the comprehensive production cost was reduced by nearly 40%. Nowadays, from auto parts to electronic components, from tool hardware to medical devices, more and more enterprises rely on powder metallurgy technology to achieve cost control and efficiency improvement in the fierce market competition.