50% Carbon Filled PEEK

[MWD]

Has anyone had experience with machining 50% Carbon Filled PEEK?
SFM ? / CHIP LOAD ? /
My company is a plastics machine shop we mill and turn all sorts of plastics
(Torlon , G11 , acrylic , Vespel , Celezol , PEEK, Ultem, ect..)
We are starting to get into milling jobs of Carbon Fiber and this 50% Carbon Filled PEEK. We as a company do not have alot of experience w/ these materials
any help would be appreciated.
application 5 axis Milling

[dfurlano]

Call Victrex and they can most likely tell you how to machine this material.

http://www.victrex.com/en/contact_us/contact_us.php

[High Seas]

The material choise is something I've been wanting to try. I'll be happy to hear/see how it does for you.
Here is a link that has some details on various machining aspects - hope its helpful:
http://www.boedeker.com/fabtip.htm

Jim

[Chuck Reamer]

I also work with a lot of plastics of a wide variety, lots of glass filled peek mostly turning.

I have a large job comming up for carbon filled peek, my boss says its very abrasive. Even worse than the fiberglass we turn on a regular basis.

I would think to start with about 75% of your SFM you use for peek and the same chip load as a start point.

I the peek you usually work with virgin or glass filled? I find that it is hard to hold tight sizes with thin walls, as soon as you part it off or take out of fixture it moves around and gets shaped like an egg.

[MWD]

Victrex had some useful information on there site
I downloaded a processing guide PDF that I will most likley use for a starting point and then figure the rest out from there
As a response to what kind of PEEK we run, we run mostly virgin
But run lots of other glass filled materials (30%Nylon, 30%Ultem, 30%Delrin ,20%-30%Polcarbonate ect.)
I prefer glass filled materials in a tight tolerance part for stability, at least for milling . A rough machining operation almost all the time to stress releive and trying to remove material equally from both sides of the blank if possible.

[Chuck Reamer]

Originally Posted by MWD I prefer glass filled materials in a tight tolerance part for stability, at least for milling . A rough machining operation almost all the time to stress releive and trying to remove material equally from both sides of the blank if possible.

I agree there is a huge stability difference between %30 and %40 glass peek, the %40 is so easy to work with. I do mostly turning right now and its hard because I usually have about %75 of the material coming off of one side, just because the tube stock sizes are limited. We are starting to inject our own tubes so that should make thinks alot better to work with.

The straight fiberglass I turn usually stays in very good shape, just dusty as hell and VERY hard on tools.