At present in the market, the demand for various parts of the product size range is generally greater than 10mm, and the minimum thickness is between 10 ~ 30mm. If MIM products can reach 30mm size range, MIM applications will be greatly widened, especially in the field of firearms, automobiles, precision machinery, such as submachine guns, machine guns, artillery, automotive engines, mechanical arm parts etc.. Metal injection molding technology ± 0.3% to 0.5% dimensional accuracy, although is better than precision casting products, but cannot compared with powder metallurgy pressing / sintering CNC machining.

If the size can be increased to ± 0.1% ~ 0.05%, close to the traditional powder metallurgy pressing / sintering process’ dimensional accuracy, and the level of CNC machining, MIM technology and vitality will greatly expand. On the other hand, although MIM has been used in various materials system, but regarding to the market sales point, most majority of products focused on low-alloy steel, stainless steel products which have low requirement on the mechanical properties.

In Japan, for example, 67% of MIM products in 2002 were low-alloy steel and stainless steel products, and less than 15% were defect-sensitive tools with high mechanical properties such as Ti-alloy, high-speed steel and hard alloy. These materials are very difficult to process and very suitable for MIM. However, due to their sensitivity to defects, traditional MIM technology is prone to introduce various defects in various process steps, so far MIM technology has been used in these materials very few applications.

 If there is defect-free and high-performance MIM technology, MIM material types will greatly expand, so as to the material market. At present, the international community has paid attention to the limitations of the existing MIM technology. A few units started in a particular area of research. Such as the French company, Impace, has developed a new technology called Quickset binderless MIM. Only 5% of the traditional MIM binder content, which breaks the traditional MIM product quality and size restrictions. By this process, with a powder particle size of 74 μm allows preparation of articles up to 20 mm in thickness and up to 800 g in weight. US company Thermat, has developed a new PMIM process, using different size powder mix, making the product size accuracy of ± 0.1%. The University of Pennsylvania is researching MIM processes for cemented carbide, high speed steel and ceramic cutting tools.

In addition, in the aspect of injection molding and other emerging advanced technology, the United States and Europe are also carrying out a variety of work, such as injection molding technology and microwave sintering technology, a variety of materials system hybrid injection, injection molding technology and microelectronics production Technology and the integration of highly automated control of the introduction of chemical production equipment.