Aluminum Nitride – CeramAlum™

Precision Ceramics is your Aluminum Nitride machining specialist for your technical ceramic prototyping & manufacturing needs. We use our many years of advanced ceramics experience to provide advice on materials, design, and application. If you would like to buy Aluminum Nitride plates, rods, tubes or custom machined components, or need more information, please contact us and one of our experts will be happy to assist you. We can supply components in prototype to production quantities with pressed, isostatic pressed, machined, and ground parts.

Aluminum Nitride can be machined in green, biscuit, or fully dense states. While in the green or biscuit form, it can be machined relatively easily into complex geometries. However, the sintering process that is required to fully densify the material causes the Aluminum Nitride body to shrink approximately 20%. This shrinkage means that it is impossible to hold very tight tolerances when machining AlN pre-sintering.

In order to achieve very tight tolerances, fully sintered material must be machined/ground with diamond tools. In this process a very precise diamond coated tool/wheel is used to abrade away the material until the desired form is created. Due to the inherent toughness and hardness of the material, this can be a time consuming and costly process. Shapal Hi-M Soft is often used as a substitute for pure AlN because it also offers high thermal conductivity, electrical insulation, and can be machined into complex geometries with tight tolerances.

AlN commonly comes in substrates up to 1 mm thick, which can easily be laser cut. It can also come in thicker forms, however, it can be difficult/costly to manufacture in small quantities if the part requires custom material or significant machining. Shapal Hi-M Soft is often used as an alternative to pure aluminum nitride because it also offers high thermal conductivity and can be machined into complex geometries.