International Syalons (Newcastle) Limited will be exhibiting at ALUMINIUM 2008 in Essen, Germany. This is the world's premier meeting for the aluminium industry and we will be showing our range of Syalon foundry products.

The exhibition runs from September 23-25, 2008 at the Messe Essen and we will be located in Hall 1, Booth 1E55. Please visit us there and see some of our foundry products made from advanced Syalon ceramics, including 2 metre long thermocouple protection sheaths.

Syalon 101 uniquely combines outstanding corrosion resistance to aluminium and its alloys, thermal shock resistance and high strength. In addition, Syalon is non-wetted by aluminium making it resistant to build up of dross. These features give Syalon 101 foundry products a significantly better service life over competitive products such as chill cast iron, silicon carbide and aluminium titanate.

For more information on our foundry products and how they may help you, please take the opportunity to speak with us at ALUMINIUM 2008 or contact us conventionally.

International Syalons (Newcastle) Limited have recently installed and commissioned a new, large, state of the art sintering furnace, which significantly extends our sintering capacity.

The furnace, built by Vacuum Furnace Engineering Ltd (VFE) of Halesowen, West Midlands, UK, allows us to manufacture sialon parts up to 2m in length, significantly longer than our previous maximum length of 1.5m. Thermocouple protection sheaths for molten metal handling, are now available in this new length at a diameter of 28mm.

In addition, the extra capacity, 6 times our previous capacity, will allow us to manufacture parts up to 600mm in diameter, far larger than the previous maximum diameter of 200mm.

For more information on our on the products we manufacture, please contact us.

International Syalons (Newcastle) Limited are the UK's leading manufacturer of advanced nitride ceramics. We are a small but fast–growing, well–established manufacturing company supplying advanced ceramics to industries such as oil and gas, automotive and molten metal handling.

Silicon nitride (Si3N4) was discovered in the mid-nineteenth century and caused no excitement among the engineering fraternity of the day. The problem was that Si3N4 does not lend itself to ease of fabrication.

Over the next century two principle routes for fabricating Si3N4 ceramics were developed: hot pressing and reaction bonding.

Hot pressed Si3N4 (HPSN), was made by adding a flux (usually magnesia, MgO) to a fine Si3N4 powder and then pressing the powder in a graphite die at high pressure and temperature. The resultant HPSN body, although fully dense and extremely strong, could only be made in to simple shapes which would then require expensive diamond grinding to obtain the desired profile.