ABSTRACT
A wide variety of applications verify the great potential of high-performance ceramics for components with special requirements. For example, hip-joint endoprostheses on aluminum oxide or zirconium oxide bases, components for slide bearings and burners of silicon carbide, as well as ceramic components for roller bearings or valves are made of silicon nitride (Spur 1989; Pattimore 1998; Popp 1998). Extension of the market share for ceramic components is often opposed by the difficulties of manufacture with respect to achievable component quality and economic efficiency. Manufacturing costs arise mainly in grinding, honing, lapping, and polishing. High costs result from relatively inefficient technologies for machining of brittle-hard materials (Uhlmann 1998). This demonstrates the need to provide economically efficient machining methods for ceramic workpieces. In addition, there is a lack of suitable strategies for economic manufacture of complex geometries such as bores, holes, grooves, spherical surfaces, and sculptured surfaces (Uhlmann and Holl 1998a).
