In the past few years the electronics industry has increased the use and manufactured quantity, as well as demand for higher quality, of high purity alumina substrate chips for circuitry substrates used in component parts of computers and other devices such as switches and calculators. These chips need to be produced from a very pure alpha alumina, utilized as a substrate for the deposition of the various electronic pathways. Impurities in this alumina would cause leakage of the electric current through the substrate and cause dielectric losses which make such chips unreliable. One method for producing alpha alumina consisted of the production of a sol-gel of alumina followed by drying and subsequent calcination to the alpha form. As existing, this method produces impure material with a very hard structure resulting in large expenditures of energy to reduce the particulate to the proper size.