Spark plasma sintering system

With this new sintering technique the tool and the component are directly heated by DC current pulses to reduce cycle times to a few minutes. The use of DC current pulses causes an additional increase in sintering activity in various materials due to the processes that occur at the points of contact of the powder particles (Joule heating, generation of plasma, electro migration etc.). Therefore, a significantly lower temperature as well as significantly lower mould pressure is needed than is used for conventional hot pressing and sintering.

Additionally, the furnaces can be equipped with a radial, inductive heating system to prevent radial temperature gradients with large-sized components or to facilitate the inductive heating of materials that are otherwise inadequately conductive at room temperature. Technology like this offers entirely new possibilities to manufacture numerous materials with extraordinary characteristics, e.g.:

Sintered nanomaterial without significantgrain growth
FGM («Functionally Graded Materials»)
Composite materials
Innovative carbide metals
Aluminum and copper alloys as well as intermetallic compounds
Structural and functional ceramics