Ball milling of ferritic stainless steel-4 vol% A12O3 powder was carried out for the duration up to 222 ks. Attritor milling of ferritic stainless steel-6 vol% A12O3 were also carried out for the duration up to 32.4ks. The characterization of the milled powders were performed. The sintering of ball milled powders was carried out at 1623K for 10.8ks in hydrogen. The premix of as received stainless steel powder and the attritor milled powder was also sintered at 1623K for 3.6ks in hydrogen. The results showed that an optimum ball milling period in between 58 and 173ks was required to achieve better sintered properties. The attritor milling was more effective in grinding the powders as compared to ball milling, and the sinterability was also higher for such powders. (Received March 18, 1985) Keywords: ball milling, attritor milling, sintering, ferritic stainless steel, particulate com-The industrial use of stainless steel powder metallurgical (P/M) products has been progressively increasing because of improvement in P/M processing techniques and attainment of high density (>6.8 Mg/m3(6.8g/cm3)) sintered parts with associated physical and mechanical properties. Stainless steel P/M parts are generally used in automotive, aircraft, business machines, chemical industry, marine applications, tools and hardware, etc.Although, in stainless steel applications, austenitic stainless steel takes the major role, but due to the relatively high cost of nickel, metallurgists are now interested to find its alternatives, and thus the applications of ferritic stainless steel have been put forward to replace austenitic stainless steel. after high burn-up of the fuel, and it thus raises a premature fuel element failure. On the other hand, ferritic stainless steels are not embrittled by high temperature irradiation. For producing a composite material by powder metallurgical (P/M) technique, it is very important to select a suitable milling technique, mixing period, and optimum sintering variables. The characterization of the milled premix powders is vital to have a clear idea for the development of the end properties by P/M technique. The ball milling is one of the simplest and very widely used mixing technique for the production of the composites, because it is very flexible. However, the mechanical alloying(1) or high energy milling is unique because of its capability to produce an homogeneous distribution of second phase throughout the matrix. There is some reported work(2)-(11) on sintering behaviour of ferritic stainless steel powder and its composites. Patel and Kuhn(12) have worked extensively on attritor milled austenitic stainless steel powder. However, there is no reported work on the characterization of the ferritic duced by attritor milling.In the present investigation the characterization of the milled ferritic stainless steel-A12O3