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Industrial ceramic, Ceramics are broadly defined as inorganic, nonmetallic materials that exhibit such useful properties as high strength and hardness, high melting temperatures, chemical inertness, and low thermal and electrical conductivity but that also display brittleness and sensitivity to flaws. As practical materials, they have a history almost as old as the human race. Traditional ceramic products, made from common, naturally occurring minerals such as clay and sand, have long been the object of the potter, the brickmaker, and the glazier. Modern advanced ceramics, on the other hand, are often produced under exacting conditions in the laboratory and call into play the skills of the chemist, the physicist, and the engineer. Containing a variety of ingredients and manipulated by a variety of processing techniques, ceramics are made into a wide range of industrial products, from common floor tile to nuclear fuel pellets. Yet all these disparate products owe their utility to a set of properties that are universally recognized as ceramic-like, and these properties in turn owe their existence to chemical bonds and atomic structures that are peculiar to the material. The composition, structure, and properties of industrial ceramic, their processing into both traditional and advanced materials, and the products made from those materials are the subject of many articles on particular traditional or advanced ceramic products, such as whitewares, abrasives, conductive ceramics, and bioceramics. For a more comprehensive understanding of the subject, however, the reader is advised to begin with the central article, on the composition, structure, and properties of ceramic materials.

Industrial ceramic is typically crystalline or partly crystalline in structure. They are made of inorganic, non-metallic matter. Early ceramics consisted mainly of clay and clay-mixtures, as used to make pottery. The natural mineral deposits of readily available clay and sand, combined to reach the right consistency when mixed with various liquids, are ideal for creating moldable material useful for traditional ceramics. This traditional ceramics mixture is used by potters and bricklayers around the world, in part because it is so readily available, easy to mix, and inexpensive.

Current developments have enabled ceramics to be used in technological applications far more complex than their traditional ceramics predecessors. Using precise ingredients, measurements, and procedures, modern advanced ceramic machining often calls upon the skills of physicists, chemists, and multiple engineers. They are used to create products as simple as a floor tile, or as complicated and intricate as a nuclear fuel pellet.

Modern advanced ceramics relies on high-quality ingredients, not just sand and clay, to create ceramics that exhibit properties needed to withstand extreme hazardous environmental conditions. At the same time, these same ceramics must be made with exacting precision to allow for flaws to be evidently visible.

Most traditional ceramics are known for their hardness, brittleness, and strength. In the past, traditional ceramics have been used as electric insulators since porcelain is resistant to the flow of electricity. Modern industrial ceramic can be made to be as tough and as conductive as the hardest metals. These ceramics are created with such precision, that their very cellular structure is controlled, manipulated, and created. Such highly conductive ceramics are often used in superconductors and many types of superior mechanical devices. This makes these heat conductive ceramics a highly sought after commodity.

There are three general categories of ceramics: oxides, non-oxides, and composites. This article breaks down those categories and looks at the different types of ceramics.

This article presented an understanding of the different kinds of ceramics and ceramic machining. For more information on related products, consult our other guides or visit the Thomas Supplier Discovery Platform to locate potential sources of supply or view details on specific products.