Polyether Ether Ketone (PEEK)

A heat-resistant, high-strength engineering plastic gaining interest as a way to cut robot weight.

PEEK, short for polyether ether ketone, is a semi-crystalline, high-performance engineering plastic with a melting point around 343°C, strong mechanical strength, wear resistance, and chemical resistance; its density is about 1.3 g/cm³, roughly a sixth that of steel, and it has long been used in aerospace, medical implants, and automotive parts. Because humanoid robots have many joints and need to stay light, the industry sees PEEK as a candidate material for “plastic-for-steel” substitution — used for gears, bearing cages, some reducer parts, and structural components, to cut weight and lower the inertia of moving parts. Its main obstacle is high raw-material and machining cost, so core transmission parts that carry heavy loads are still mostly metal today.

Also called

PEEK Plastic

Related

Replacing Steel with Engineering Plastics (Plastic-for-Steel Substitution) · Lightweighting (Magnesium Alloy / Carbon Fiber) · Speed Reducer / Gearbox · Strain Wave Gear (Harmonic Drive) · Core Components

Sources

Polyether ether ketone - Wikipedia