<p>High performance polymers are becoming available for specific applications.</p>

<p>One of such materials is PEEK (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyether_ether_ketone" rel="noreferrer">PolyEther Ether Ketone</a>), a thermoplastic polymer in the polyaryletherketone (PAEK) family. PEEK competes with certain Aluminium alloys but is half the weight of Aluminium. For aerospace application this sounds very promising!</p>

<p>NASA has <a href="https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20170000214.pdf" rel="noreferrer">shown</a> that printing these types of polymers is feasible using low-cost, open source hardware.</p>

<p><strong>Does anybody know why the prices of PEEK are so high?</strong></p>

<p>Depending on the supplier/manufacturer you're looking at about 700 - 900 Euro per kg.</p>

<p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/fqNar.png" rel="noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/fqNar.png" alt="Natural colored PEEK filament samples"></a></p>

[{'answer_id': 6514, 'author': 'amra', 'author_id': 75, 'author_profile': 'https://3dprinting.stackexchange.com/users/75', 'pm_score': 4, 'selected': True, 'text': '<p>My assumptions about PEEK filament price are:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Raw material is more expensive. Compare price of <a href="https://www.alibaba.com/showroom/abs-pellet.html" rel="noreferrer">ABS</a> with <a href="https://www.alibaba.com/showroom/peek-pellet.html" rel="noreferrer">PEEK</a> pellets.</li>\n<li>Demand is much lower. There are not many printers able to print peek. If you manufacture PEEK filament you have to store a filament batch for longer time. Manufacturer has to calculate into price storage space, material degradation, ...</li>\n<li>Filament machine tuning. You have to tune filament extrude machine for PEEK, which takes time because it\'s a totally different plastic. Maybe there is a cleanup needed after finishing a batch and switching to another material.</li>\n<li>Working conditions. PEEK is quite smelly and I am not sure if you have to improve work conditions like better ventilation. </li>\n<li>Research costs. You have to distribute research costs to a filament production where demand is low. </li>\n</ul>\n'}, {'answer_id': 6519, 'author': 'typo', 'author_id': 10684, 'author_profile': 'https://3dprinting.stackexchange.com/users/10684', 'pm_score': 3, 'selected': False, 'text': '<p><strong>Patents</strong> still seem to play a role as well.</p>\n\n<p>I was curious about this question and did a bit of research: If you filter the <a href="https://patents.google.com/?q=%22Polyether%20ether%20ketone%22&amp;country=US&amp;after=priority:20100101" rel="noreferrer">U.S. patents after 2010 mentioning PEEK</a> and its various applications and improvements, you still get roughly 10,000 patents. Those are not all primarily patents for PEEK, but still.</p>\n\n<p>Even <em>Victrex PLC</em>, formerly named <em><a href="https://drakeplastics.com/peek/" rel="noreferrer">Imperial Chemical Industries</a></em>, who filed the <a href="https://register.epo.org/application?number=EP78300314&amp;tab=main" rel="noreferrer">first patent for PEEK back in 1978</a>, had a <a href="https://patents.justia.com/patent/20160208045" rel="noreferrer">patent published in 2016</a> for a new PEEK production procedure:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n  <p>The process can be used to produce high quality, relatively light\n  coloured polymers having a lower Tm than those produced using a\n  standard PEEK process.</p>\n</blockquote>\n'}]
['https://3dprinting.stackexchange.com/questions/6511', 'https://3dprinting.stackexchange.com', 'https://3dprinting.stackexchange.com/users/5740/']