Jul 21, 2016 | By Alec
If you’ve ever gone online in search of a superior 3D printing filament, you’ve probably experienced a lot of frustration. Before you know it, you’re attacked by sales pitches that all talk about ‘excellent material properties’, ‘high strength’ or ‘high flexibility’ for each and every filament out there, and it can be very hard to tell the difference. That’s why we’re a big fan of practical tests, and Italian professional 3D printer developers Roboze just completed a remarkable one. To showcase the thermal properties of the often lauded PEEK filament, they performed an eight-and-a-half-hour long thermal inertia test on 3D printed PEEK, only to find that it barely lost its mechanical or thermal properties.
That is a remarkable result for PEEK (polyetheretherketone), which is known for its excellent properties. Imagine a high-performance material that has an extremely high melting point (343°C), better wear and abrasion properties than titanium and steel, is repeatedly sterilize-able, chemically inert, and biocompatible (meaning it can be used in both harsh corrosive operating fields and in human implants). Although it sounds almost too good to be true, that material exists, and is commonly known as PEEK.
As a result, the strong, tough, and rigid PEEK material is already widely used in research and engineering circles. Its current applications include medical implants, electronic gears, aerospace parts, and automotive engineering, and its introduction into the market as an industrial material has revolutionized 3D printing possibilities for engineers across a wide range of sectors.
Really, it’s only major drawback is that few desktop 3D printers can reach the high temperatures necessary to 3D print it. PEEK pioneers Indmatec have one that can, and the Italian Roboze One+ 400 desktop FDM 3D printer is one of the few other 3D printers out there that can 3D print PEEK as well. Roboze itself is a Bari-based 3D printer manufacturer, known for developing world’s only beltless desktop 3D printers. Particularly focused on cost effective solutions for professional users, their 3D printers can work with a variety of industrial plastics such as PEEK.
In an attempt show exactly how that material reacts under stress, they put an 25 x 25 x 10mm block of PEEK (3D printed on a Roboze One+ 400 3D printer) to the test. Placing the block on an electric resistor that was heated to 245 degrees Celsius, they maintained a continuous temperature for a massive eight-and-a-half hours. While we can’t even imagine what would happen to PLA in those circumstances, for instance, the engineering-grade PEEK performed admirably. In fact, it lost just 35 percent of its thermal and mechanical properties in comparison to standard conditions, showing that PEEK is very reliable in hazardous or unexpected situations.
This test, which can be seen in the clip below, showcases exactly why PEEK is widely used in high shock situations and for aerospace, defense, and automotive applications. But as the Roboze team said, they are focusing on more than just PEEK and will continue to search for other top quality engineering materials that can be brought to the world of 3D printing.
Posted in 3D Printing Materials
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At :40 looks like a fair amount of warping to me. What kind of test is this? No control sample, No per-measurements, No post measurements, No tensile or compression tests. Where is the time laps of the part heating up and cooling down?
mick wrote at 7/21/2016 5:40:55 PM:
At :40 looks like a fair amount of warping to me. What kind of test is this? No control sample, No per-measurements, No post measurements, No tensile or compression tests. Where is the time laps of the part heating up and cooling down?
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