PAEK grades optimised for AM

Newly developed materials are being prepared by Victrex for additive manufacturing (AM). The first of these is a high strength material for laser sintering (LS) which attains lower refresh rates, resulting in improved recycling for non-sintered powder. The second is a filament with better Z-strength than existing PAEK materials and better printability for filament fusion (FF).

“These next-generation Victrex PAEK materials for additive manufacturing mark a decisive step forward, having potential to transform multiple applications, including aerospace and medical. The exciting progress is based on continued intense R&D at Victrex and excellent collaboration within the Victrex led consortium of companies and institutions pursuing innovation in additive manufacturing. Through this consortium we’re already seeing demonstrator parts that show how AM processes, coupled with high-performance materials, transform thinking to create truly innovative parts based on increased design possibilities”, Jakob Sigurdsson, Victrex CEO, commented.

Advantages of additive manufacturing can be deployed to reduce costs, shorten time to market, and enable the production of parts too complex to be manufactured using traditional methods. 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 moulding. Because of this, they have some features that are not optimal for additive manufacturing processes. A first generation of PAEK material for laser sintering 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 (improves recycle for non-sintered powder) with similar mechanical properties in LS, and in FF good mechanical properties and printability.

“Breakthrough technology is paving the way for an exciting future for additive manufacturing PAEK. The powder recycle work for laser sintering, using the new Victrex development polymer grades has gone very well, with no measurable loss of properties when test components were made from partially recycled powder. We believe it will be possible to reuse all of the non-sintered powder that is recovered after a build run. This will result in a significant reduction in material costs compared to current PAEK materials where up to 40% of the polymer is wasted and cannot be recycled”, John Grasmeder, Chief Scientist at Victrex, explained.