Design and test of additive manufacturing for coating thermoplastic PEEK material

3D printing, also known as additive manufacturing, has been considered as the next big thing that can potentially spread as cell phone industry. Nowadays, product resolution restricted by material and fabrication process is ranging from 20 to 300 pm and still has the trends toward higher precision. However, tradeoff between time costs and resolution is always a dilemma in Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) technique. In contrast, the idea of Laminated Object Manufacturing (LOM) has been applied for rapid prototyping recently. In this work, based on the concept of bond-then-cut, a light and ultra-thin slot die coater has been developed to generate thin and uniform layer of thermoplastic Polyether ether ketone (PEEK) material. By utilizing the suitable flow channel geometry through numerical simulation, PEEK's affinity with substrate, and coating window establishment, we produced 600 mm2 PEEK film with thickness low to 50 pm within a minute, which greatly enhance the manufacturing efficiency. In addition, 10 layered film with 1 mm in thickness has been demonstrated. The success in fabricating PEEK film by the novel design shows its good potential and applicability in additive manufacturing.