Forming of spray formed copper alloys with injected carbon

This article gives a short introduction in spray forming of copper alloys with additional particles such as carbon. The first part deals with the consequences of extra particles such as carbon in the spray formed billet. Samples were selected in longitudinal and transversal directions of the billet. Investigations like tensile and upsetting tests were performed to specify material properties. Forward cold extrusion tests were made to show differences between the carbon spread of these two kinds of samples. In the second part of this paper, the new thixoforging process is introduced. The spray formed billets show a fine grain structure, which is one important necessity for the thixoforging process. It is shown that the stretching of the carbon clusters in press direction, generated by the usual hot extrusion after the spray forming, can be broken up.