What is Ceramic Sintering? Sintering is the process of forming a solid mass of material by heat and/or pressure without actually melting it. Sintering is part of the firing process used in the manufacture of ceramic and porcelain tiles as well as other manufactured objects. Sintering also happens naturally in mineral deposits. The atoms in the materials diffuse across the boundaries of the particles, fusing the particles together and creating one solid piece. A common example of sintering is when ice cubes in a glass of water adhere to each other. The word "sinter" comes an old form of the word "cinder". Sintering is effective in the firing of ceramic tiles because the process reduces the porosity and enhances properties such as density, strength and translucency. As the diagram below shows, the process eliminates the small pores between each particle and fuses them together. Control of temperature and the consistency of the size of particles is very important to the sintering process. Some ceramic raw materials have a lower affinity for water and have a lower plasticity than clay, requiring organic additives in the stages before sintering. The general procedure of creating ceramic objects via sintering of powders includes: Mixing water, binder, deflocculant, binder and unfired ceramic powder to form a slurry; Spray drying the slurry; Putting the spray dried powder into a mold and pressing it to form a green body (an unsintered ceramic item); Heating the green body at low temperature to burn off the binder; Sintering at a high temperature to fuse the ceramic particles together.   Download our ceramic tile brochures or browse our website here. For any other inquiries about Porcelain or Ceramic tiles please drop us an email.   Ciao, The Link International team.