Several months ago I was contacted by /u/Ggalisky about a a project where he had extruded PEEK filament with a Filastruder, and was looking for testers. (On a side note, Ggalisky has also built a DIY HT printer, one much more impressive than mine - though it also cost quite a bit more! Go check out his project as well!) I figured, this was a pretty opportunity to jump back into PEEK, so I took him up on his offer of a couple small coils of PEEK to test.
PEEK: The second attempt
Armed with all of the experience I had built up as well as the ungodly power of Nano Polymer Adhesive, I tackled it again and this time went ham with the temperatures.
For the first print, I chose a little spur gear this time. It should prove to be pretty easy for any filament, being small and flat.
Hey, that looks pretty good! There were gaps in the top because of too low of an extrusion multiplier, but it didn't warp at all and the coloration was excellent throughout!
Picking it and playing with it, I could also feel none of the creaking present in some of my older prints. This is looking promising!
You know, the Ultem Marvin on my keychain has been looking kinda lonely lately.
And another great looking print! I was particularly worried about coloration here, being a more complex print with overhangs, but this time the entire print was consistently tan and opaque.
This time, I did have to turn the chamber temperature up to 110C. 90C was fine for the earlier print because of how flat it was, but this one is quite a bit taller.
Let's try something a little harder:
No sweat at all. The printer ate the gcode and spit this out like nothing.
Maybe it's finally time.
And there you have it. 9 months in the making, the humble little Maker Ultimate I bought on clearance for $320 has finally become PEEK Performance.
So where are we now?
PEEK Performance has now seen 901 hours of printing at the time of writing. In the time, it's eaten about a quarter kilogram of PEEK (okay, PEEK is expensive, alright?) 2kg of Ultem, and the rest has been PC and ABS. It's proven astonishingly reliable: during those 900 hours, the only part failure that's occured is when a Molex Microfit inside the chamber deformed enough from high temperatures to lose connection.
Max temp on the hotend is still 450C. Max temp on the bed that I'm comfortable using is now 230C, though E3D seems to say that 250C is passable for short periods.
The chamber is...well, it's a tough question. Under the chamber heater power alone, it reaches 124C. With a 230C bed, it's enough to bring the chamber to 138C. However, I would not in any circumstance consider using the chamber at 138C, because at that point I become too nervous about my parts melting.
And also, that requires the full 1200W, and my electricity bill has already been raised enough.
No, the motors haven't failed. No, the fans haven't failed. No, the belts haven't failed. No, I don't understand why either.
As I've gotten better at using PEEK, I've also started sparingly incorporating it into some actual functional roles - shown here is that same PEEK fan shroud I'd been trying to make for months. Key word is sparingly. This stuff still costs $500/kg!
As for Ultem, well, it's become practically easy. I can do medium-large parts in Ultem on a routine basis, and have used Ultem in quite a few printer parts and other project parts already. Getting to this point wasn't easy, but we're here now so I might as well take advantage of it!
This entire project has gone so much more successfully than I ever anticipated. Printing PEEK was one of my interests, yes, but it seemed so much like a pipe dream in the early stages and I never expected I'd actually be able to reach this point. Who knows what else might be possible!
So where do we go from here?
Oh, this is nowhere near done.
Vision Miner had a guideline a long time back that basically said, if you want to do large solid parts in PEEK, you need a 180C chamber. That honestly seems about right - I've been doing PEEK at a 110C chamber still, and I can't do anything larger than 100mm or so in a single dimension without significant warping. 180C is a stretch goal, but 150C is my next target.
To do that, I'm going to need several significant changes.
The belts I'm running are surprisingly still the stock Gates belts that came with the Maker Ultimate, supposedly rated for just 80C. 110C or even 120C still doesn't seem to kill them, but I have a feeling 150C will. I'm going to switch them to Gates EPDM belts rated for 135C, so that hopefully at 150C they'll survive (and I'll still treat them as a consumable).
Same thing with the bushings in the sliderblocks. The current polymer bushings seem to be struggling a lot at 120C. I intend to replace them with sintered bronze bushings.
The hotend fan is likely not going to survive. I'm slowly working out a way I can fit watercooling into this printer, and I'll be trying to move the hotend to be watercooled. While we're on it, might as well watercool the motors too.
And finally, I'll need much heavier duty insulation. Lots of heat still escapes out of the metal frame of this printer. If I could find a way to insulate all of the walls of the printer, not just the ones easily accessible by removing the panels, it would do worlds for heat retention.
One day, maybe in the distant future, I may even try printing PBI. Who knows...
It's been a long road, and there's still quite a ways to go. But the possibilities are endless, and I'm looking forward to exploring as many as I can.
Final costs:
Total cost of printer: $820
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