Ceramic properties can vary with the method of manufacturing.
If one sends the same polycrystalline powder to different companies to manufacture a certain piece, the results will be very much different compared to sending a metal. This is due to the thermodynamical, chemical and mechanical stress which act on the ceramic component being manufactured:

Purity – contamination, grain size – doping, process conditions at pressing / injection moulding, binder removal, sintering conditions, hardmachining etc. have an enormous influence on the material properties of advanced ceramics.

Our Quality Assurance is tightly linked with the production process.
A few way of methods we use to trace both good and bad performance are:

• moisture and humidity measurement (quantitative)

• pyknometer for density measurements

• stereo microscopes

• video microscope with photo database and analysis

• roughness measurement for complex shaped surfaces (software assisted)

• 2D-measurements with resolution > 2 micron (tactile and nontactile)

• nondestructive proove of surface cracks

• lot's of self-built "crash tests"

• micrograph analysis

• EDAX and SEM analysis (external)

• the brain of every single colleague

You are heartily invited to check us out.