POWDER METALLURGY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 22 June 1942, Page 4

POWDER METALLURGY

USED FOR WAVING HAIR & MAKING AIRCRAFT. A process used in woman’s hair-wav-ing is helping to build aircraft for Britain. It is a form of powder metallurgy, perhaps • the greatest innovation in metal-working for thousands of years, in which, instead of using molten metal articles are made from fine metallic powders and pressed into solid and durable shape. For ladies’ “perms” a metal powder is packed in little sachets of absorbent paper. When moistened, a reaction between the metal and certain chemicals generates the precise amount of heat required, so setting the hair- in waves. In making parts for aeroplanes, guns, ships, tanks and other equipment, powder metallurgy has two great advantages: it is very light and it is selfoiling—that is to say, the metal has fine pores which can absorb oil and retain it almost indefinitely. The pioneer of powdey metallurgy was an Englishman, Mr V/. H. Wollaston, who in 1829 worked out a powder process for platinum because the melting point of this metal was too high for the furnaces then in use. It is being used in Great Britain today not only for making metal parts but also for paints, printing inks, metal spraying, soldering and brazing, hardening concrete, dental alloys, fireworks, explosives and diamond tools. In the near future it may be possible to use it for a ribbonless typewriter in which porous type faces soak up the ink and stamp it on paper.