There is a spectrum of needs for reference, overview, and instructional material concerning the fabrication of ceramic and ceramic composite specimens and es-
pecially components. These needs range from, at one extreme, addressing basic
scientific principles and parameters of different processing and fabrication meth-
ods to, at the other extreme, basic engineering aspects, including costs and re-
lated operational factors. Scientific principles are most extensively treated in
various books that focus on individual, or a limited range of, established process-
ing methods, mostly those based exclusively on pressureless sintering. Such
books may address in a perfunctory manner, or not at all, important topics such
as pressure sintering processes, melt processing and fabrication, and chemical
reaction processes, especially the important subject of chemical vapor deposition
(CVD). Some engineering aspects of some processes are treated in some books,
but mostly in a limited way and often in older books. The counterpart of basic
scientific and basic engineering aspects are detailed operational factors that ad-
dress both cost and component performance trade-offs that are needed for a suc-
cessful manufacturing process. However, these are addressed very little or not at
all in the literature since they would be very extensive and generally proscribed
in their treatment by proprietary concerns.