Quadrant Ketron® PEEK 1000 is a low flow grade of unreinforced polyetheretherketone (PEEK) with excellent wear resistance, fatigue resistance, high purity, and excellent chemical resistance to organics, acids, and bases. Quadrant Ketron PEEK 1000 is available in transparent and opaque grades. An opaque grade was chosen for processing. A diagram depicting Quadrant Ketron PEEK 1000 is shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1. Quadrant Ketron PEEK 1000 diagram showing the consistent nature of the sheet at 6.8 mm thick.
Quadrant Ketron PEEK 1000 is suitable for laser marking, producing a high contrast mark on the surface of the material. Laser marking of Ketron provides a processing method that does not require tooling and enables the creation of small, fine geometries that can be challenging to achieve using traditional mechanical methods. Universal Laser Systems makes it simple to consistently and repeatedly process this material with a high degree of dimensional accuracy. Other processes, such as laser cutting, are not suggested as they do not provide acceptable results with the wavelengths and power levels available from ULS.
Laser Processing Notes
Quadrant Ketron PEEK 1000 was tested to assess laser processing compatibility and to determine the best system configuration of laser wavelength and peak power. Pigments in Quadrant Ketron PEEK 1000 readily absorb the 1.06µm laser wavelength and, when configured with either 40 or 50 watts of 1.06µm laser energy, create a high contrast mark on the surface of the material. This surface marking does not produce debris and therefore does not require post-processing. An image of Ketron PEEK 1000 after processing with settings designed to produce high contrast surface marking is shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2. Macro image of the laser-processed surface of Ketron PEEK 1000. The text in the image is 12-point Arial font and the verifiable 2D Data Matrix measures about 25 mm square.
Conclusion
Quadrant Ketron PEEK 1000 is suitable for laser surface marking and was tested to determine the optimal processing configuration. Through this testing, it was determined that laser processing is viable for this material using a 1.06µm laser source to produce high contrast surface modification.
