Applications Insight: 3D Printed PEEK Shoe Mold – IEMAI 3D Printing Filament Store

Datang Xinxin Rubber & Plastic Co. Ltd was established in 1989 and located In Nanhai District Foshan City, Guangdong. The factory covers an area of 60,000 square meters and has more than 500 employees. They are specialized in production of various EPR/EVA/ Rubber sole materials, sports equipment and leisure products, which meet the international environment ROHS standards, and sell well at both domestic and oversea market. At present, the company produces 5 million pairs per year, and earn up to 100 million yuan per year.

In traditional way, the mold for making shoe soles need to be used for a long time, due to the restriction of the surrounding temperature and condition of 180°C and 140 BAR, PEEK is introduced among all other 3D printing materials. Due to the excellent properties of PEEK materials, it creates a feasible condition for this application industry. PEEK material is a special engineering plastic with excellent characteristic, such as high temperature resistance, self-lubricating, easy processing, and high mechanical strength. In theory, PEEK materials can be used in high temperature environment (260°C) for a long time and maintain in its best performance.

The tensile strength of 3D printed PEEK products can reach a range of 63-88 MPa, tensile modulus of 3.35MPa, compressive strength of 55-70MPa and bending strength of 81.5 MPa, which are good performance of 3D printed peek materials. In general, molds printed using 3D printing technology, named as development molds, usually only need to be used for 3-5 times and at last metal will still be used to produce the final model mold.

Therefore, 3D printing PEEK mold only needs to ensure that it can be used three times, that means, this method can greatly improve the efficiency of mold development. By using 3D printed mold, mold development projects can be quickly realized to improve R&D efficiency and meet all high temperature and high-pressure criteria. IEMAI 3D MAGIC-HT-L 3D printer can achieve a layer resolution of 0.05-0.3 mm and it performs very well when printing large-size PEEK molds. It is the best molding effect among several companies in comparison. There is no wrapping happening when printing, thus, Datang Xinxin Rubber and Plastic Pte Ltd choose this model to produce PEEK material development molds.

The project manager of Datang Xinxin Rubber and Plastic Co. Ltd said, “Using IEMAI 3D printing solutions, we greatly shorten the time required to R&D mold and verification. We believe that 3D printing technology can change the entire industry in the future.