Fraunhofer-Center HTL’s pilot plant facilities include various furnaces for the heat treatment of oxide and non-oxide ceramics as well as metals. The following processes can be carried out in different atmospheres and optimized in close cooperation with the customer: Debinding, pyrolysis, graphitization, melt infiltration particularly with silicon and sintering. Various furnaces are connected to a thermal afterburner, making it possible to carry out processes that produce large volumes of condensates. In addition to test-firing, quality assurance can be performed on all samples and components before and after firing using computerized tomography, mechanical characterization, density measurements etc. to document any possible changes or damages to the material (see Material testing).