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PEEK coating very small objects
August 26, 2015
Q. Has anyone experience with powder coating of very small objects? We have pieces of tubing with length of 5 mm and about 1.6 mm outer diameter that we want to coat outside with a layer of about 5 micron PEEK (polyether ether ketone) Melting point of PEEK is about 340 °C
We have also tubing of about 25 cm long that we want to coat inside (diameter 1 - 5 mm) with about 10-20 micron PEEK
Thanks,
Jan Peene
- Middelburg, The Netherlands
A. Hi Jan. To my limited knowledge, PEEK coatings are available as powders (in a good range of sieve sizes) and as wet sprayable coatings.
If the production volume is sufficient, it should be possible to build a wet coating system or a fluidized powder bed for the ODs if the volume is sufficient to justify the custom design of a vibratory feeder system such as is used in miniature assembly processes, with the tubes ultimately seated onto closely spaced pins on a custom chain.
The ID of the long thin tubing sounds difficult but you might want to talk to a PEEK supplier about the possibility of an e-coat or autophoretic PEEK coating. If that's not available or practical, perhaps a e-coating based on a different polymer could suffice. What material are the tubes made of?
Regards,
Ted Mooney, P.E. RET
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey
August 2015
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