Wire mesh sintering

Wire mesh is a main filter media for metal filter elements. Sintered wire mesh is multi-layer  laminated wire mesh produced by certain process called sintering.

What is wire mesh sintering?

Mesh sintering is also called diffusion bonding. It is a process of metallic material processing. The adjacent wires partially melt and merge with each other under certain pressure and temperature (lower than melt point) with time.

The microscopic phenomenon is atom immigration and settlement. After cooling the wires connect with each and the wire mesh or multi-layer wire mesh become a whole mesh plate.

How the sintered wire mesh is made?

Fully inspected and defect-free wire mesh was cut into pieces. Some kind of wire mesh may need pre-calendering to ensure the flatness and facilitate the sintering. Then layers of wire mesh are laminated with designed alignment and spot welded to avoid movement during transferring.

The wire mesh laminates then will be stacked into the furnace. The sintering process will take dozens of hours. The wires merge with adjacent counterparts and the laminates become a whole part.

After controlled cooling the sintered wire mesh laminates are calendered to required thickness. Flatness of the sintered wire mesh is then obtained by the process of flattening. Finally the sintered mesh is cleaned and dried, then ready to be fabricated or packaged.

Wire mesh sintering furnace in lianda filter workshop

Process flow chart of wire mesh sintering

Why wire mesh needs sintering?

What are the benefits of the sintering?

For each layer wire mesh:

The wire mesh is woven by looms, which interconnect the warp and weft wire with knuckles. There are gaps between warp and weft wire, thus the mesh is a loose part with changeable pore size and the wire is subject to migration and shedding at the edge of the mesh.

The wires merge with each other after sintering. Sintered mesh eliminates the possibility of migration and shedding, and makes the pore size fixed.

For multi-layer of wire mesh:

By sintering multi-layer wire mesh, the sintered mesh laminates give the filtration layer good support and protection. It is a necessity for filtration application.

For example, the 2 micron Dutch weave wire cloth is only 0.08 mm in thickness, even thinner than a sheet of A4 paper. It is too fragile to work with any filtration task. After sintering with protection and support layer and form the standard 5 layer sintered wire mesh, the filtration rating is still 2 micron, but the thickness change to 1.7 mm. Obviously the sintered mesh is more capable with fabrication and serving for filtration.