Abstract: 316 austenitic stainless steel powder metallurgy sintered body was fabricated by vacuum sintering method, and the influence of sintering temperature on the microstructure and mechanical properties was studied. The tensile fracture surface morphology was analyzed. The results show that the grains coarsened gradually, pores reduced and size decreased, the relative density, tensile strength, yield strength and elongation of the sintered body increased obviously with the increase of sintering temperature, while increased unobviously when the temperature reached 1 340 ℃ and even decreased slowly. The optimal sintering temperature was 1 340 ℃, the density and tensile strength of the sintered bady could reach 7.86 g·cm-3 and 754 MPa, respectively.