| Abstract |
Ceramics have an established market in industrial applications like metal forming, machining and some mechanical components. Most ceramics are prepared by conventional powder metallurgy (PM) and about 60 % of all components need some kind of post sintering machining operation. Electro Discharge Machining (EDM) is a process that could machine these hard materials, providing that the ceramics have a sufficiently high electrical conductivity. The major advantages of EDM are the accurate machining and the ability to produce complex shapes. Although some ceramic materials can be machined by EDM (e.g. TiN, TiC,..), the EDM process and ceramic materials have never been co-developed for each other. The MONCERAT project aims the research in the development of new electro-conductive ceramic materials as well as the development of new EDM generators. An important aim of the MONCERAT project is to gain a basic understanding on the interaction between the ceramic material (e.g. microstructure) and the EDM machining process. Further, the project aims to study how material properties of EDM'd ceramic components can be integrated into the design phase. The production of new ceramic materials will be partially based on the use of high quality nano-powders produced by the SHS process (Self propagating High Temperature Synthesis). The MONCERAT project expects a large potential impact on the use and development of ceramic materials for automotive, aerospace, machine tool, process engineering, health care, biomedicai, wear, micro-mechanics and environmental applications. The consortium consists of 11 partners from 5 European countries. The uniqueness of the MONCERAT project is the strong co-operation between ceramic material producers, EDM machine builders and potential users (all SME's) of ceramic materials in order to extend the fundamental knowledge, needed to developed the ceramic materials of the future that can optimally be shaped by EDM.'
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