Special polymer grades solutions by Victrex for Additive manufacturing

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Victrex developed two advanced PAEK products especially designed for additive manufacturing, the first being a high strength material suited for laser sintering (LS) and the second a filament with better Z-strength than existing PAEK materials and better printability for fusion filament (FF).

The PAEK incumbent materials on the market today, although used in some AM applications, were designed for conventional manufacturing methods, such as machining and injection molding. Because of this, they have some features that aren’t optimal for additive manufacturing processes. A first generation of PAEK material for LS can only be recycled in a very low extent and required nearly full refresh of the printing bed with new powder, and PEEK filaments available for FF have poor interlayer bonding, leading to a loss in Z-strength.

The new polymer grades developed by Victrex have shown encouragingly low refresh rates, improving recycle for unsintered powder, with no loss of properties in LS, and in FF good mechanical properties and printability. The re-use of all of the non-sintered powder that is recovered after a build run should result in a significant reduction in material costs, compared to current PAEK materials where up to 40% of the polymer gets wasted and cannot be reclycled.

The new AM materials have a strong potential to transform multiple applications, including aerospace and medical, and are based on continued and intense R&D at Victrex. Victrex is also leading innovation in AM leading a consortium of companies and institutions, Innovate UK, and here the new PAEK filament and powder tie in with technologies developed by other members of the project. EOS has recently released a new automation-ready manufacturing platform for laser sintering of plastic parts on an industrial scale (EOS P 500) with the capability to print high-performance polymers at high temperatures.

Selected materials of the consortium are evaluated at EOS R&D facilities for processability on current EOS systems as well as for use with the EOS P 500 platforms. Victrex is planning to continue pre-commercial testing of a new PAEK filament product in conjunction with consortium partner E3D, who has recently commercially released a new water-cooled filament extruder head especially optimized for this new PAEK filament.

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