The invention relates to a "porous sintered metal comprising voids at least partially communicating with each other, and pores provided in walls of the voids with the average diameter of the pores being 1 micrometer or more when measured by a mercury press-in method."

An abstract of the invention, released by the US Patent Office, said: "The porous sintered metal is produced by blending a metal powder, a binder and resin particles to prepare a mixture in which the resin particles are dispersed; moulding the mixture to provide a green body; selectively extracting the resin particles from the green body with a solvent; debinding the extracted green body by heating; and sintering the debound green body."