PEI is an extremely high performance plastic that excels at temperature resistance and dimensional stability. Additionally, PEI is an extremely low outgassing plastic, making it a good choice for vacuum applications where other plastics would cause issues.

PEI 9085 is also an extremely low creep polymer, meaning that there is nearly zero deformation under long term continuous loads. While this property is often forgotten, it is exceptionally useful when designing components that must remain in proper tension for very long periods of time without intervention, such as aerospace, deep sea, and nuclear research applications.

While POM is not incredibly strong, stiff, dimensionally stable, or temperature resistant, it is absolutely one of the lowest friction materials that is possible to 3D print. This makes POM an extremely popular option for machined bushings and gears, since it allows for sliding contacts with virtually zero wear and little friction loss.

If POM isn’t special aside from being low friction, why is it a high performance plastic? This is because of how difficult this material is to work with. POM is low friction, meaning that it doesn’t like to stick to anything (and we mean anything). Traditionally, the only way to even keep POM stuck to a print bed on most machines was a bed structure that physically locks the plastic down so that it doesn’t just slide off while printing. We can only reliably print this material on specialized machines that use a unique build plate surface to promote adhesion.

PEKK-A is an amorphous variant of PEKK. This makes it behave more consistently during printing while still maintaining extremely high strength, stiffness, and temperature resistance. PEKK also produces very little outgassing in a vacuum environment, making it another very good choice for UHF (Ultra High Vacuum) applications.

PEEK is often referred to as the ultimate plastic available for additive manufacturing. It is incredibly high strength with good stiffness, temperature resistance, elongation at break, and stiffness. It is a crystallizing polymer, which means that it forms chains between molecules that add to it’s strength and massively improves performance. PEEK is a favorite plastic for use in high vacuum and hostile environments as it produces extremely low rates of outgassing and exhibits extreme dimensional stability in hostile environments.