Our Outstanding Peek Manufacturing Capability to Delight your Customers
RapidDone knows well for PEEK material, we are able to deal with different peek projects, and offers the most proper solutions. As an experienced PEEK plastic machining manufacturer, we are glad to manufacture quality and precision peek parts to delight your customers.
The Basic Information For PEEK Engineering Material
PEEK is also known as Polyetheretherketone. It is a high-performance engineering plastic material with excellent wear resistance, chemical resistance, biocompatibility, high stiffness, and high strength. Another benefit is the high temperature withstanding ability that performs well at a temperature of 480°F.
Typical Manufacturing Processes
Usually, PEEK materials are available in sheet, rod, tube, film, and plastic granule format.
When creating PEEK parts, there are two main manufacturing processes.
The first way is the CNC machining process, the raw material is PEEK sheet, rod, tube, film. It is ideal when you are in need of small quantities for rapid prototyping build or low-volume manufacturing build. At RapidDone, we have an experienced team and be able to finish prototypes orders in several days.
The second way is plastic injection production, the raw material is PEEK plastic granule. It is suggested to use this for the high-volume order. At RapidDone, we can use rapid injection molding services to have parts done in two weeks.
The Applications
There are two types of PEEK materials: industrial-grade PEEK or medical-grade PEEK. They are used in different applications.
Industrial-grade PEEK is the most commonly used in manufacturing industries, including automotive, aerospace, chemical, semiconductors and electronics, oil and gas, as well as food industries.
Medical-grade PEEK, on the other hand, is wildly used for custom medical components applications, such as spinal devices, articulating joints, and other medical equipment applications.
The Recommended Machining Tips
√ Take Annealing Process
Peek sheet or rob is a special material, it easily creates high internal stresses during the machining process. This internal stress leads to possibilities of surface cracks formation. It also reduces to part to get tight tolerance and flatness.
To fix this issue, the solution is to take the annealing step to relieve the stress before you start the machining work. Besides, some PEEK parts may take additional intermediate annealing processes if the machining time is too long.
√ Make a Correct Tool Selection
That depends on the material types you are going to the machine.
When cutting natural PEEK material, it is suggested to use sharp silicon carbide tools.
When cutting carbon-fiber-reinforced PEEK material or bearing Grade PEEK material, it is ideal to use a higher hardness tool such as a sharp diamond tool.
√ Handle Well for the Chips
PEEK has high tenacity, the chip is not easily cut into pieces. Thus, it may be easier to get around your tool and melt on the tool surface.
To avoid this, you need to use the right tool to ensure the chips fly. At the same time, monitor the machining closely, use the vacuum to clear chips on time before it turns into a big problem.
√ Preventing Contamination of PEEK Medical-grade Workpieces
It is important to dissipate the heat during the PEEK part machining by using a coolant, the best way is to machines dry. In that case, the air is used as the coolant, this can avoid jeopardizing the biocompatibility for medical-grade PEEK material components.
FAQs
Q1: What are the Six Reasons Where Distortion May Happen for PEEK Machining?
• It does not apply an annealing step to remove internal stress, or internal stress is not removed completely.
• The cutting depth is too much.
• There is no coolant progress.
• The cutting is not a balanced cutting, one side’s cutting volume is bigger than the other side.
• The PEEK workpiece clamp is not firmed enough, this causes vibration during machining.
• The clamping force is too big that distort the workpiece.
Q2: How to Remove Burr for CNC Machined PEEK Parts?
PEEK easily creates a burr because this material has high tenacity. There are four ways to get rid of the burr.
• Try to use the diamond tool and keep the tool to be as sharp as possible.
• Add chamfer feature to get rid of the burr from edges.
• Use second operation progress to remove the burr.
• Try to use glass-filled or carbon-filled PEEK materials instead of normal types.
Let us Handle your PEEK Projects
As a professional on-demand manufacturing company with more than 10 years of experience, RapidDone is proud of our strong manufacturing capabilities. We offer a variety of PEEK fabrication services, we are sure that we can produce high-quality PEEK parts to your exact specifications at a very low cost.
Have a question for your PEEK project? Talk to us today, our PEEK manufacturing experts will follow up for you with an excellent answer.