kimyo,
It all depends how much you want to spend. There are generally two types of zirconia sintering ovens. The cheaper version (less than $10,000) uses ceramic based heating elements and many companies make those furnaces. The sintering time is 8 to 12 hours.
The newer and more expensive version (about $20-25,000) is microwave based. It is a lot more efficient and it allows for sintering times between 1 and 2 hours. The technology is rather new and has some problems like uneven heating. Not very many companies offer this.
There may be a third version of those sintering ovens, but the details are rather scetchy. ORIGIN offers a non-microwave oven that apparently can do sintering in 2 hours.:
ORIGIN CAD/CAM If anybody has any experience with any of those please post your comments. I have been involved in the design of similar furnaces and have to say it is very hard to achieve 1,600C temperatures.
Kamen
