3D printing in hard plastic

Testing a 3D printer that can print all available thermoplastics and in particular engineering hard plastics such as ‘PEEK’.

PEEK, short for Polyether ether ketone, is a thermoplastic that has very robust mechanical properties in terms of strength, stability, wear and temperature resistance – so strong in fact that PEEK parts can actually do comparable jobs to some metal parts.

This opens up the prospect of producing customised 3D-printed parts that can actually stand up to the extreme conditions encountered in space. Up until now plastic 3D printers have used much weaker plastics, such as ABS and PLA, usually employed for making toys or parts with non-structural functionality. The PEEK 3D printer at ESA’s Materials and Electrical Components Laboratory is only the second ever built, manufactured by a small German company called Indmatec. For more information watch the full video.