Raw materials and mixing
The principle basic raw materials are:

	blacks: lamp black and carbon black,
	cokes: metallurgical coke and petroleum coke,
	natural graphites: from Madagascar, Ceylon, etc.
	artificial graphites: from reprocessed electrographitic materials.

After grinding, sieving and particle size selection, the materials are mixed with binders such as:

	pitches,
	tars,
	phenolic and furfurylic resins.

The first mixing is made in a specific mixer at a controlled temperature during the whole operation. The pastes thus obtained are worked by edge runner mills, calendaring and extrusion.

Forming
After processing the material is available for forming in:

	powder: for precision moulding to simple geometric forms,
	paste: for extrusion into round of hollow forms.

Baking
This operation is carried out in continuous or discontinuous furnaces according to a very precise heating and cooling cycle which results in coking of the binder and agglomeration of the carbon base material, under well defined conditions the baking temperatures are of the order of 1,200oC and the cycle time can vary from a few days to several weeks, according to the nature of the material and dimension of the blocks.

In certain applications materials, can be used at this stage of manufacture. They are known as “amorphous” carbon.

For other applications it is necessary to have a material with a high thermal conductivity and resistance to thermal shock. The material in this case is graphitized. The artificial graphite obtained is sometimes also called electro-graphite.

Some interesting features of the two materials, carbons and graphites, can be combined by incorporating natural or artificial graphite in the raw materials. In that case, the material obtained is called carbon-graphite.

Graphitization
The transformation of amorphous carbon into electro-graphite is obtained at high temperatures, from 2,000°C, in induction furnaces (small quantities, short cycles) or large resistance furnaces (large quantities, long cycles).