In this work, mechanical characteristics of stainless steel diaphragm have been studied as a potential robust substrate and a diaphragm material for micromachined devices. Lamination process techniques combined with traditional micromachining processes have been adopted as suitable fabrication technologies. To illustrate these principles, capacitive pressure sensors based on a stainless steel diaphragm have been designed, fabricated and characterized. The fabrication process for stainless steel micromachined devices keeps the membrane and substrate being at the environment of 8.65MPa pressure and $175^{circ}C$ for a half hour and then subsequently cooled to $25^{circ}C$. Each sensor uses a stainless steel substrate, a laminated stainless steel film as a suspended movable plate and a fixed, surface micromachined back electrode of electroplated nickel. The finite element method is adopted to investigate residual stresses formed in the process. Besides, out-of-plane deflections are calculated under pressures on the diaphragm. The sensitivity of the device fabricated using these technologies is 9.03 ppm $kPa^{-1}$ with a net capacitance change of 0.14 pF over a range 0$sim$180 kPa.