Award: Award of Distinction
Year: 2005
Category: Metal Injection Molding
Market Segment: Medical

Description:
The award was given to a manifold used in a hand-held fiber-optic swivel dental system that delivers air, water, and fiber-optic light simultaneously into a patient’s mouth. The very complex part is made from 17-4PH stainless steel powder to a density of 6.7 g/cm³. The part has 19 callouts of critical dimensions allowing a tolerance of ± three-thousandths of an inch or less. Five callouts allow tolerances of only ± one-thousandth of an inch. The part has seven cores. The 23-thousandths core is a compound plane to the center line of the part and could not be machined as a post-sintering operation due to the small diameter of the drill. The part is drilled in the green state. Metal injection molding replaced a machined part that had yielded a poor useable rate of only 60%.