Gelcasting superalloy powders

Gelcasting is a process for forming inorganic powders into complex shapes. It was originally developed for ceramic powders. A slurry of powder and a monomer solution is poured in to mold and polymerized in-situ to form gelled parts. Typically, only 2-4 wt % Polymer is used. The process has both aqueous and nonaqueous versions. Gelcasting is a generic process and has been used to produce ceramic parts from over a dozen different ceramic compositions ranging from alumina-based refractories to high-performance silicon nitride. Recently, gelcasting has been applied to forming superalloy powders into complex shapes. This application has posed several challenges not previously encountered in ceramics. In particular, problems were caused by the larger particle size and the higher density of the particles. Additional problems were encountered with binder removal. How these problems were overcome will be described