Last updated: 9 October 2026.
Quick answer. The register holds powder metallurgy and sintering in two separate searches. The powder-metallurgy term is a small, complete family of 19 records. The word for sintering returns 150 — and fewer than 80 of them are about a sintered metal part at all.
Powder metallurgy in China: what the GB register actually holds, why the word for sintering returns bricks, and which standards a sintered part should name.
Every standard number, title, status, issue date and effective date on this page comes from the national standards register's title search, retrieved on 9 October 2026 and listed at the end. The register publishes titles and dates only, and the English titles here are this page's translations.
This is a register-reading page. It sets out what China's national standards register actually contains for powder metallurgy and sintering, which records apply to a sintered metal part and which are about something else that happens to carry the same two characters, and which standard numbers a buyer placing an order for 2026 or 2027 delivery should be naming.
It does not tell you which factory to use, it does not quote a price, a minimum order or a lead time, and it does not restate the technical content of any standard. The register publishes titles, numbers, dates and status; it does not publish the text, and neither does this page.
Sintering is the step that turns a compacted metal powder into a part, so it is the word a buyer naturally searches. The register's title search is a string match, and it does not care about the industry. Searching the two characters for sintering returns 150 records in total, of which 85 are in force, 60 are superseded and 5 are pending.
Sorting those 150 by what their titles actually govern gives the split below. The grouping is ours, produced by a stated first-match rule over the returned titles rather than by the register, and it is the single most useful thing on this page:
| What the 150 records the term for "sintering" returns actually govern | Records |
|---|---|
| Sintered metal parts, powders and their test methods (powder metallurgy) | 77 |
| Building ceramics: bricks, blocks, tiles, paving and wall materials | 23 |
| Iron-ore and steel-plant sintering, for blast-furnace feed | 18 |
| Permanent magnets | 11 |
| Refractories and technical ceramics, including silicon-carbide kiln furniture | 9 |
| Nuclear fuel pellets | 7 |
| Diamond and superabrasive saw segments | 3 |
| Dental furnaces | 1 |
| Polymer membranes | 1 |
Read down the column and the trap is obvious. A buyer who searches the word for sintering and takes the list at face value will spend most of the list reading about bricks. The largest single non-metal block is building ceramics, the second is the iron-ore sintering that a steel plant does before a blast furnace, and between them sit magnets, nuclear fuel, kiln furniture and saw blades — four industries that sinter something, none of which is powder metallurgy in the sense a component buyer means.
This is the sixth time this site has documented the same behaviour in this register, after the conveyor-belt cord hiding inside a wire-rope search, the surgical implants inside a forging search and the ceramic materials inside a nitriding search. The rule is always the same: search the process, then read every title before trusting the list.
There is no single register entry for powder metallurgy either. The family sits in two title searches, and the counts below are what the register reported on 9 October 2026:
| Search term (Chinese) | English meaning | Records reported | Retrieved | In force | Superseded | Pending |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 粉末冶金 | powder metallurgy | 19 | 19 | 9 | 10 | 0 |
| 烧结 | sintering | 150 | 150 | 85 | 60 | 5 |
Two things about this table are worth stating precisely.
The powder-metallurgy term is complete and small. All 19 reported records were retrieved — there was no page cap and no shortfall, so 19 is the whole family, not a sample. That is unusual on this register and it makes the term unusually useful: a buyer can read the entire powder-metallurgy vocabulary of the national system in one sitting.
The sintering term is ten times larger and mostly not about metal. It is also the term whose count is most misleading, for the reason above. Neither term on its own is a specification list; the two together are.
This is the complete set of in-force records the powder-metallurgy term returns — all nine of them, with the dates the register carries:
| Standard | What its title says it covers | Issued | Effective |
|---|---|---|---|
| GB/T 3500-2008 | Powder metallurgy — terminology | 2008-06-09 | 2008-12-01 |
| GB/T 4309-2009 | Classification of powder metallurgy materials and the designation system | 2009-03-19 | 2010-01-01 |
| GB/T 5314-2011 | Powders for powder metallurgy — sampling method | 2011-12-30 | 2012-10-01 |
| GB/T 34905-2017 | Sintered metal materials — determination of the cleanliness of powder metallurgy parts | 2017-11-01 | 2018-05-01 |
| GB/T 12767-1991 | Powder metallurgy products — surface roughness parameters and their values | 1991-03-22 | 1992-05-01 |
| GB/T 19743-2018 | Water-atomised pure iron powders and alloy steel powders for powder metallurgy | 2018-09-17 | 2019-06-01 |
| GB/T 26037-2010 | Powder metallurgy tantalum sheet for deep drawing | 2011-01-10 | 2011-10-01 |
| GB/T 2688-2012 | Plain bearings — technical conditions for powder metallurgy bearings | 2012-05-11 | 2012-12-01 |
| GB/T 3658-2022 | Soft magnetic metallic and powder metallurgy materials — measurement of magnetic properties over 20 Hz to 100 kHz on ring specimens | 2022-10-12 | 2022-10-12 |
Our reading, and it is ours. Look at what the list is for. Seven of the nine are vocabulary, sampling, material designation, surface finish or a test method; only two — the bearing specification and the tantalum sheet — are product specifications at all. The powder-metallurgy term is a language, not a parts catalogue. That is why a purchase order cannot be written from it alone: it tells you what the terms mean and how to test, and leaves what the part has to be to the product-family standards that live under the other term.
The ten superseded records behind those nine are just as informative, because each one is a one-for-one replacement rather than a deletion. GB/T 3500-1998 gave way to the 2008 terminology; GB/T 4309-1984 to the 2009 classification; GB/T 5314-1985 to the 2011 sampling method; GB/T 19743-2005 to the 2018 powder specification; GB/T 2688-1981 to the 2012 bearing conditions. Three more are the 1981 dimensions series for powder metallurgy bearings — cylindrical, spherical and flanged cylindrical — all superseded together, and one is GB/T 14667.1-1993, the iron-based structural materials standard whose title names sintered iron, sintered carbon steel, sintered copper steel and sintered copper-molybdenum steel. A supplier's certificate citing any of the ten is citing a document the register no longer carries as current.
The product-family and test standards for sintered metal parts all sit under the other search term, which is exactly why the wrong search term costs a buyer time. This is the group a specification should be assembled from, with the register's own dates:
| Purpose | Records in force (register titles) |
|---|---|
| The specification itself | GB/T 19076-2022 — specification for sintered metal materials, which supersedes the 2003 version |
| Bearings and bushings | GB/T 2688-2012 (powder metallurgy bearings), GB/T 18323-2022 (sintered bushings — dimensions and tolerances), GB/T 6804-2008 (sintered metal bushes — radial crushing strength) |
| Filters and porous parts | GB/T 6887-2019 (sintered metal filter elements), GB/T 6886-2017 (sintered stainless steel filter elements), GB/T 20100-2016 (stainless steel fibre sintered filter felt), GB/T 34646-2017 (sintered metal membrane filter materials and elements), GB/T 25863-2010 (stainless steel sintered metal wire-mesh porous materials and elements), GB/T 11415-1989 (laboratory sintered porous filters — pore size, grading and designation) |
| Moulded and metal-injection parts | GB/T 38981-2020 — specification for sintered metal injection moulding materials |
| Soft magnetic and friction parts | GB/T 24296-2009 (sintered soft magnetic materials), the GB/T 10421 to GB/T 10425 friction-material test series and GB/T 10430-2008 (bonding performance of sintered metal friction plates) |
| Cemented-carbide sintering | GB/T 6883-2017 — dimensions of cemented carbide sintered products for wire, bar and tube drawing dies |
| Powder | GB/T 19743-2018 (water-atomised iron and alloy steel powders), GB/T 5159-2025 (dimensional change associated with compaction and sintering) |
| Density and porosity | GB/T 5163-2006 (permeable sintered metal materials — density, oil content and open porosity), GB/T 3850-2015 (density of impermeable sintered metal materials and cemented carbides) |
| Mechanical testing | GB/T 7964-2020 (room-temperature tensile test), GB/T 7963-2015 (tensile specimens), GB/T 6525-2019 (room-temperature compressive strength), GB/T 5319-2002 (transverse rupture strength), GB/T 9096-2025 (Charpy impact test), GB/T 5318-2017 (unnotched impact specimens), GB/T 41155-2021 (fatigue specimens), GB/T 9097-2016 (apparent and microhardness) |
| Physical properties | GB/T 5166-2023 (elastic modulus), GB/T 5167-2018 (electrical resistivity), GB/T 40389-2021 (surface roughness) |
| Pore size and permeability | GB/T 5249-2013 (bubble-test pore size), GB/T 5250-2014 (fluid permeability), GB/T 31909-2015 (air permeability), GB/T 38516-2020 (mean pore size at medium flow), GB/T 34643-2017 (gas filtration performance) |
| Case depth on sintered iron | GB/T 9095-2008 — determination and verification of the case depth of carburised or carbonitrided sintered iron-based materials |
Our reading. The shape of the group is worth naming: the test-method layer is roughly three times the size of the product-specification layer. That is not an accident of this register — it is what happens when a fabrication route is young relative to its customers. A buyer who writes "sintered, per GB" onto a drawing has named a route; the numbers that decide whether the part is acceptable are in the test documents, and each one usually has to be named separately.
Note also the two boundaries a purchaser of this kind of part will meet. Sintered metal wire mesh and fibre felt are covered here — GB/T 25863-2010 and GB/T 20100-2016 — but the mesh products themselves are a hardware category on this site, and our wire mesh guide covers them as products rather than as sintered materials. Metal injection moulding has its own material specification here — GB/T 38981-2020 — while the process route it belongs to is covered by our injection moulding guide.
This register separates compulsory standards (numbered `GB`) from recommended ones (numbered `GB/T`), and the separation is the fastest way to see what the state regulates. Applied to this family the answer is unusually clean:
The powder-metallurgy search returns no compulsory standard at all. All 19 records, in force and superseded alike, are recommended.
The sintering search returns six compulsory records, and four of them are already superseded. The two still in force are:
| Standard | What its title says it covers | Issued | Effective |
|---|---|---|---|
| GB 28662-2012 | Emission standard of air pollutants for the iron-ore sintering and pelletising industry | 2012-09-03 | 2012-10-01 |
| GB 30526-2019 | Norm of energy consumption per unit product for sintered wall materials and foam glass | 2019-10-14 | 2020-05-01 |
The four superseded ones are the compulsory brick and block standards of 2000 and 2003 and the 1989 and 2014 versions of the sintered-factory health-protection and wall-material energy rules.
Our reading, and it is ours. The pattern matches every other process family this site has read: the compulsory layer regulates the plant and the environment, not the part. Both records still in force belong to the other two industries that use the word — steel-plant sintering and building materials. For a sintered metal component, the entire applicable layer is recommended, which means two things for a buyer: a supplier cannot point to a compulsory national standard as the reason a part is made a certain way, and the acceptance criteria are therefore a contract matter rather than a compliance one.
These are records in force today whose effective date falls inside the current or next delivery year. Most of them belong to a single family that was rewritten in one sitting.
| Standard | What its title says it covers | Effective |
|---|---|---|
| GB/T 9096-2025 | Sintered metal materials, excluding cemented carbides — Charpy impact test method | 2026-01-01 |
| GB/T 10421-2025 | Sintered metal friction materials — determination of density | 2026-01-01 |
| GB/T 10422-2025 | Sintered metal friction materials — determination of transverse rupture strength | 2026-01-01 |
| GB/T 10423-2025 | Sintered metal friction materials — determination of tensile strength | 2026-01-01 |
| GB/T 10424-2025 | Sintered metal friction materials — determination of compressive strength | 2026-02-01 |
| GB/T 10425-2025 | Sintered metal friction materials — determination of apparent hardness | 2026-02-01 |
| GB/T 5159-2025 | Metal powders, excluding powders for cemented carbides — determination of dimensional changes associated with compacting and sintering | 2026-05-01 |
Our reading. The friction-material block is the story here: five parts of one family, all issued in 2025 and all taking effect in the first quarter of 2026. A drawing or a test plan written before 2025 will name the earlier parts of that series, and this is the one cluster on the page where a routine order is most likely to cite superseded numbers without anyone noticing. The Charpy method changed in the same window, and the dimensional-change method for powders takes effect in May 2026.
One further replacement is worth flagging even though it took effect in 2022: GB/T 19076-2022, the specification for sintered metal materials, supersedes the 2003 version, and it is the single document most likely to appear on a sintered part's certificate. A certificate quoting the 2003 number is quoting a superseded specification.
This page belongs with the other process guides in this site's manufacturing index. Where the sintering step is followed by a hardening treatment, the case-depth method for sintered iron — GB/T 9095-2008 — is one of the records listed above, and the general treatment is covered by our heat treatment guide. Where a powder-metallurgy compact is instead hot-formed, the route changes family and our forging guide applies, including its reference to the method for non-metallic inclusions in metal powders for powder forging. The sampling question this page raises — how much of a lot is tested, and at what rate — is treated for bought-in goods in our quality control guide, and dimensional acceptance for a sintered part belongs with our tolerances guide.
All register data retrieved 9 October 2026. The register publishes titles, numbers, dates and status only; the titles above are translated by this page, and the official Chinese titles are the specification. Status words the register uses are in force, superseded and pending.
Because the register's title search matches the characters, not the subject. The term returns 150 records, and grouping them by title shows 77 about sintered metal parts and their test methods, 23 about building bricks, blocks, tiles and wall materials, 18 about iron-ore and steel-plant sintering, and the rest spread across permanent magnets, refractories, nuclear fuel pellets, diamond saw segments, a dental furnace and a polymer membrane. The grouping is ours; the 150 is the register's.
The term returns 19 records and this time all 19 were retrieved, so the family is complete rather than capped: nine in force and ten superseded. It is a vocabulary and testing family more than a parts catalogue — only two of the nine in-force records are product specifications. The parts standards themselves sit under the other search term.
No. The powder-metallurgy search returns no compulsory standard at all — every record in it is recommended. The sintering search returns six compulsory records, but four are superseded and the two in force are the air-emission standard for iron-ore sintering and pelletising and the energy-consumption norm for sintered wall materials and foam glass, both of which govern the other two industries that use the word.
The clearest cluster is the sintered metal friction materials: five parts of that series were issued in 2025 and take effect on 1 January and 1 February 2026, and a sixth record in the same group is the bonding-performance method. The Charpy impact method for sintered metal materials also takes effect on 1 January 2026, and the dimensional-change method for metal powders on 1 May 2026. Separately, the sintered metal materials specification was replaced in 2022.
Not as a substitute in this register's terms. The register carries GB numbers and their titles, and it does not publish equivalences to other systems. Whether a given ASTM or MPIF designation is accepted for a particular part is a contract and engineering question, and a mapping inferred from titles would be invented. Where a drawing must carry both, treat each number as its own specification rather than as a translation of the other.
All sources retrieved 9 October 2026. This page is an independent reading of the sources listed; the official pages themselves are the specification.
| Fact used on this page | Source |
|---|---|
| S1 — Every standard number, title, status, issue date and effective date on this page for the powder-metallurgy term, including the 19 records reported with 9 in force and 10 superseded; the complete in-force list; the superseded series behind it, including the three 1981 dimensions standards for powder metallurgy bearings and GB/T 14667.1-1993; the count of test-method versus product-specification records; the absence of any compulsory record in the term; and the replacement of GB/T 19076 by the 2022 specification as recorded in the other term | National standards information public service platform, standards register title search operated by the Standardisation Administration of China — the powder-metallurgy title search (Chinese), retrieved 9 October 2026 https://std.samr.gov.cn/gb/search/gbQueryPage |
| S2 — Every standard number, title, status, issue date and effective date taken from the sintering term, including the 150 records reported with 85 in force, 60 superseded and 5 pending, and all 150 retrieved with no shortfall; the product-family and test records listed in the specification table; the 2025-issued friction-material series and the other 2026 effective dates in the version-churn table; the Charpy method of 2025; the dimensional-change method of 2025; GB/T 5163-2006 and GB/T 3850-2015 for density; the porous-part pore-size and permeability methods; GB/T 25863-2010 and GB/T 20100-2016 for sintered wire mesh and fibre felt; GB/T 38981-2020 for metal injection moulding materials; GB/T 6883-2017 for cemented carbide sintered products; GB/T 9095-2008 for case depth on sintered iron-based materials; and the six compulsory records, of which GB 28662-2012 and GB 30526-2019 remain in force | Same register, the sintering title search (Chinese), retrieved 9 October 2026 https://std.samr.gov.cn/gb/search/gbQueryPage |
| S3 — The rule used to group the 150 sintering records is this page's own: a first-match keyword classification applied to the returned titles, run as a script over the retrieved register data, with every record matched to exactly one group and none left unmatched | This page's own method; the grouping is not the register's and the register publishes no such classification https://std.samr.gov.cn/gb/search/gbQueryPage |