Investigation into Laser Sintering of PEEK using Commercially Available Low Powder Bed Temperature Machine

Polyetheretherketone (PEEK) is one of the highest performance plastics in terms of heat and chemical resistance and mechanical strength. Laser sintering of PEEK requires high powder bed temperature above 300℃, and this pushes up machine price and pulls down powder recycle rate which leads to high material cost. The authors are proposing a modified laser sintering process which allows the bed temperature to be set lower than recrystallization temperature, namely low temperature process. In this research, bed temperature of 170 ℃, which is typical for PA12 process, and bed temperature of 200 ℃ which is same as previous study were tested. As a result, parts with a high relative density of more than 95% were obtained at both powder bed temperatures, and parts with a tensile strength of 80 MPa were obtained at a powder bed temperature of 170 °C. This shows that laser sintering of PEEK can be processed with a commercially available laser sintering machine resulting in drastic cost cut in terms of machine and material costs.