Luke Rodgers dives into an innovative material that offers superior resilience, affordability, and functionality compared to traditional materials. This episode highlights its unique properties, applications, and the excitement surrounding its potential impact on the industry.
• Discussion of the material • Comparison with traditional materials • Benefits of focusing on resilience and fatigue resistance • Applications in various industries beyond prosthetics • How PK5000 was developed and its future commercialization plans
Special thanks to Advanced 3D for sponsoring this episode.
00:00:00.620 --> 00:00:03.810 Welcome to Season 10 of the Prosthetics and Orthotics Podcast.
00:00:03.810 --> 00:00:11.846 This is where we chat with experts in the field, patients who use these devices, physical therapists and the vendors who make it all happen.
00:00:11.846 --> 00:00:20.125 Our goal To share stories, tips and insights that ultimately help our patients get the best possible outcomes.
00:00:20.125 --> 00:00:23.207 Tune in and join the conversation.
00:00:23.207 --> 00:00:27.329 We are thrilled you are here and hope it is the highlight of your day.
00:00:28.411 --> 00:00:35.103 Hello everyone, my name is Joris Peebles and this is another edition of the Prosthetics and Orthotics podcast with Brent Wright.
00:00:35.103 --> 00:00:35.805 How are you doing, brent?
00:00:39.720 --> 00:00:43.569 We had so much content come out from AOPA.
00:00:43.569 --> 00:00:48.045 It's like I'm still buried in that, you know yeah, totally, man, without it was.
00:00:48.104 --> 00:00:51.121 I was like that was crazy how much you recorded that when you were there.
00:00:51.121 --> 00:00:52.884 Man, I really missed being there.
00:00:52.884 --> 00:01:01.421 That's first off, I really need to go and uh, it was a lot in a very short time, but then I missed the kind of the regular cadence of talking to you every week and doing this every week.
00:01:01.421 --> 00:01:02.884 So it's kind of like a double kind of thing.
00:01:02.884 --> 00:01:12.412 On the one hand, it was amazing to have so much content and that whole random thing where we did, where just random people would come and just keep coming to join us, was completely crazy and a lot of fun.
00:01:12.412 --> 00:01:13.382 So I enjoyed it.
00:01:13.382 --> 00:01:14.888 But yeah, I do miss our regular episodes.
00:01:14.947 --> 00:01:20.807 I'll say yeah, yeah, well, we'll get this one out and I'm really excited about this one, but I did want to just share.
00:01:20.807 --> 00:01:29.843 Uh, you know, duane scott put on an amazing conference, the cd fam conference in brooklyn, and it was.
00:01:29.843 --> 00:01:31.186 It was really great.
00:01:31.186 --> 00:01:38.760 Yeah, it's amazing how far in really I say, a relatively short amount of time.
00:01:38.760 --> 00:01:49.686 But like the computational design, machine learning, all that stuff, and what was neat is a lot of the people kind of defined what was going on.
00:01:49.686 --> 00:01:51.652 You know, what is AI?
00:01:51.652 --> 00:01:52.713 What is machine learning?
00:01:52.713 --> 00:01:54.343 Do we believe in AI?
00:01:54.343 --> 00:01:55.465 What are we doing?
00:01:55.545 --> 00:02:01.403 And the bottom line that I took away from it is there's still a human aspect to it.
00:02:01.403 --> 00:02:01.763 Right, it's.
00:02:01.763 --> 00:02:05.992 What can the humans input to get results that you want?
00:02:05.992 --> 00:02:08.807 But you know, for really from anything.
00:02:08.807 --> 00:02:27.294 There was a that started off doing computational design, but they started with like jewelry, with like it looks like leaf veins, you know, and so they had this algorithm that creates these leaf veins that are uber-realistic and each piece is different.
00:02:27.294 --> 00:02:36.275 But then a surgeon saw what they were doing and said, hey, that looks like human veins.
00:02:36.275 --> 00:02:47.888 And so now they've completely, they still do some of the art stuff, but now they're using these algorithms to print tissues and vascularize these systems and it's going pretty well.
00:02:47.907 --> 00:02:58.043 They're trying to miniaturize, miniaturize, but it's just amazing where that goes okay, super cool man, and I know I've been hearing good things about the conference from other people.
00:02:58.043 --> 00:02:59.266 But who's it for?
00:02:59.266 --> 00:03:07.487 Is it really for people who are really deep into this, this 3d printing, dfam, design stuff, or what kind of people should go to that conference next year?
00:03:08.939 --> 00:03:25.073 Yeah, so I can imagine it's kind of like, I mean, the early days of AMUG, where it was like these are the people that are down in the trenches and you actually have access to them to talk with them at lunch breaks and you know the breaks and such.
00:03:25.073 --> 00:03:31.563 It's a very small, intimate group, but these are the people that are literally writing the software, creating these ideas.
00:03:31.563 --> 00:03:32.526 They're architects.
00:03:32.526 --> 00:03:36.483 You know some in healthcare, the shoe space.
00:03:36.483 --> 00:03:58.295 So I would say for the time being, like if you're interested in that stuff, you know you may get something out of it, but it gets into the weeds pretty quick, and so I could definitely see somebody that's not even really 3D printing or doing much of anything on the software side really getting lost in a hurry and it wouldn't be very beneficial.
00:03:58.295 --> 00:04:06.783 But for those that are actually in it, I think it will open your eyes but then also connect you to people that are doing really great things.
00:04:07.405 --> 00:04:17.362 Okay, and if I'm working in software in any kind of way, if I'm day-to-day in front of a car doing additive or if I'm making a software package, I should totally 100% be there, right 100%.
00:04:17.442 --> 00:04:23.069 Yeah, especially if you're wanting to look at how are you going to automate, how are you going to train things.
00:04:23.069 --> 00:04:25.411 And this is the first conference.
00:04:25.411 --> 00:04:28.956 I wanted to do a post about this, but I didn't know how to put it all together.
00:04:28.956 --> 00:04:37.653 That's kind of funny, like things that you see at CDFAM, and it's like people taking notes and coding their software program at the same time.
00:04:37.653 --> 00:04:44.351 You know they're like in the audience, and then I looked over and there's a guy playing chess and listening, you know.
00:04:44.351 --> 00:04:47.240 So these this is not like the normal conference.
00:04:47.240 --> 00:04:53.576 These are like uber smart people Like I was definitely not among did you feel like?
00:04:53.615 --> 00:04:54.600 did you feel out of your depth?
00:04:55.201 --> 00:05:01.425 We were like, oh, my God, it was an outkicking of the coverage on my side of things, but I got to talk to a lot of cool people.
00:05:01.927 --> 00:05:02.528 Okay, that's good.
00:05:02.528 --> 00:05:03.552 Did you get to speak or not?
00:05:10.160 --> 00:05:11.242 I did got to talk to a lot of cool people.
00:05:11.242 --> 00:05:11.644 Okay, that's good.
00:05:11.644 --> 00:05:12.206 Did you get to speak or no?
00:05:12.206 --> 00:05:12.447 I did, yeah.
00:05:12.447 --> 00:05:27.661 So I got to share what we've got going on with life enabled and some of the automation that we're trying to do to bring prostheses or access to prostheses worldwide and really lower the barrier to entry to get prostheses on people where software is going to be an issue, and then upskilling on the software will be an issue.
00:05:27.742 --> 00:05:33.846 So this I was really excited to be able to share that okay, super cool and did you get a lot of like feedback from people?
00:05:33.846 --> 00:05:38.264 Were a lot of people interested in that, or was it too specific for them, or do they really like the application?
00:05:39.007 --> 00:05:53.855 they really like the application and I got to talk to, yes, a bunch of people afterwards and in I'm going to probably be working with some people doing some finite element analysis using some other structures.
00:05:53.855 --> 00:05:59.810 So I was always curious and I don't know if you've had them on the guys from Spherine.
00:06:00.932 --> 00:06:01.413 No, no, no.
00:06:02.134 --> 00:06:03.122 Oh, my goodness, they have this.
00:06:03.122 --> 00:06:04.795 They've developed this structure.
00:06:04.795 --> 00:06:06.704 That's a circular structure, that's it's.
00:06:06.704 --> 00:06:29.067 It's made more for the powder bed fusion side of things, which might be appropriate for today, but it's stiff in all directions, so like a truly isotropic structure that is developed and so you'll have to uh, I'll put it in the show notes too, but it's called spherine and they just had integrationine and they just had integration into Rhino, they just had integration into Entopology.
00:06:29.067 --> 00:06:40.949 But it's not only stiff, but it can also be used on the heat exchanger side, and they've just made it very easy to make it, and you can do different densities, different wall thicknesses.
00:06:40.949 --> 00:06:44.951 There's a lot of great features that go along with it.
00:06:44.951 --> 00:06:47.023 So I highly suggest you check it out.
00:06:47.023 --> 00:06:56.829 But I was just doing some exercises on my part with it and literally it's up to a 70 percent weight savings wow, that's amazing.
00:06:57.271 --> 00:06:57.951 And what are these guys?
00:06:57.951 --> 00:07:00.184 They're selling the software to make a specific geometry.
00:07:00.184 --> 00:07:02.511 Is that what they're selling, or yeah, so's, it's.
00:07:02.971 --> 00:07:08.444 Yeah, so it's a software to create this specific geometry within a volume.
00:07:08.444 --> 00:07:16.483 But there's oh, this is kind of like dumb meat, Like it's almost like a plugin, I guess you would say, but I'm definitely under-complicating it.
00:07:16.483 --> 00:07:24.968 It's more than a plugin, because there's a lot of other things that are going on, but it allows you to get the structure and put it onto your devices.
00:07:26.209 --> 00:07:28.632 Okay, interesting, that could be interesting for us as well.
00:07:28.632 --> 00:07:30.355 That's cool, man, I'm glad you went to that.
00:07:30.355 --> 00:07:32.701 Yeah, super cool.
00:07:32.701 --> 00:07:35.567 That's also not exactly my part of the fence either.
00:07:35.567 --> 00:07:39.153 So I always feel like, yeah, I should go, but then I don't go.
00:07:39.153 --> 00:07:40.774 I don't know, I don't know.
00:07:42.482 --> 00:07:45.391 We should go at one point I did get to speak with John from 3dprintcom.
00:07:46.173 --> 00:07:46.555 Cool.
00:07:46.716 --> 00:07:48.605 Yeah, yeah, so he hadn't met him in person.
00:07:48.605 --> 00:07:50.865 He goes, hey man, and so we had a good.
00:07:50.865 --> 00:07:55.605 I didn't realize he was from New York and he had come down, so yeah, so that was kind of fun too.
00:07:55.625 --> 00:07:56.026 Awesome.
00:07:56.026 --> 00:07:56.930 I'm glad you met him, dude.
00:07:56.930 --> 00:08:02.209 Yeah, guest though we have a guest.
00:08:02.209 --> 00:08:03.310 Oh my god, the poor guest.
00:08:03.471 --> 00:08:07.204 Who's our, who's our long-suffering guest so this one's going to be an interesting one.
00:08:07.204 --> 00:08:09.730 So this is luke rogers.
00:08:09.730 --> 00:08:26.206 He is the ceo of a newly formed company called lumis polymers, and we have talked about pk 5000 before and he is the brainchild behind it, and so, um, I think we're going to have a lot of fun.
00:08:26.206 --> 00:08:27.810 Thanks for having me, brent, appreciate it.
00:08:28.490 --> 00:08:29.312 That's super cool.
00:08:29.312 --> 00:08:31.095 Welcome to the show, luke, thank you.
00:08:31.095 --> 00:08:38.200 So okay, brent is the number one fanboy worldwide of this PK5000 stuff.
00:08:38.200 --> 00:08:56.552 And just a little bit of like a background or maybe more generally, before Luke can take us a bit further, I would think background or maybe more generally, before Luke can take us a bit further, I would think we've always struggled in powder bed diffusion in particular, but also all other additive manufacturing, 3d printing technologies, to really make really strong, really kind of resilient materials that stand up to the wear and tear of the outside world.
00:08:57.535 --> 00:09:02.936 The stuff that is easy to stick together is not the stuff that is then easily stuck together forever kind of.
00:09:02.936 --> 00:09:07.530 That's always been our problem and so one of the people have been going all sorts of ways with that.
00:09:07.530 --> 00:09:09.145 One thing is to fill your materials.
00:09:09.145 --> 00:09:11.086 One other way is to put lots of additives in them.
00:09:11.086 --> 00:09:19.528 Another way is to use a relatively strong kind of base material or to do culminations of those things, and there have been a lot of work around PEC.
00:09:19.528 --> 00:09:27.188 Another kind of polyether ketone, ether-ether ketone type materials, that kind of polyether ketone, ether ether ether, ketone type materials, that kind of P, a, e, k family.
00:09:27.188 --> 00:09:28.910 It's very difficult to print.
00:09:28.910 --> 00:09:31.114 They're very expensive to print but really high performance.
00:09:31.114 --> 00:09:41.350 And there's been a lot of work on on on polyamide like nylon type, ppa type materials or high performance type of versions of the polyamides we all know.
00:09:41.730 --> 00:09:49.410 And and then there's all of a sudden, there's this PK5000.
00:09:49.410 --> 00:09:50.899 So tell us a little bit about this PK5000, this material.
00:09:50.899 --> 00:09:52.363 Yeah, thanks for letting me talk about it today.
00:09:52.363 --> 00:09:53.245 The PK5000 material.
00:09:53.245 --> 00:09:59.871 And when people think about polyketones in general, they do tend to go right towards the aromatic type that you were just mentioning.
00:10:02.562 --> 00:10:11.602 So the polyether ketones, the polyether ketone ketones, those are the high temperature, high rigidity, expensive polymers that most people think of when they think of polyketones.
00:10:11.602 --> 00:10:21.471 Pk5000 is actually based on aliphatic polyketones, so it's highly flexible backbone, which means it has a lower melting temperature and is much cheaper to make.
00:10:21.471 --> 00:10:31.732 So it's relatively inexpensive compared to the traditional polyketones and is on par with the polyamides that you would be using in your typical SLS systems today.
00:10:31.732 --> 00:10:36.572 In general, polyketone that are aliphatic has some really interesting physical properties.
00:10:36.572 --> 00:11:01.274 When you look at the overall resistances to chemical resistance, the overall toughness of polyketones, those are retained in the aliphatic materials and you mentioned, you know, one piece of the puzzle and we look at actual utilization of additive manufacturing parts and end-use applications.
00:11:01.940 --> 00:11:16.510 It's been really hard for the additive manufacturing industry to put you know, shall I say, a relative data together to be able to compare materials to really understand what their actual damage tolerance is.
00:11:16.510 --> 00:11:21.948 So a lot of us have historically looked at trying to increase just the impact strength of polymers.
00:11:21.948 --> 00:11:35.836 And impact strength is great for comparing how parts are going to fail on a hard impact or if they've got a flaw in them, and it's an important part of actually determining if your part can survive the unused application.
00:11:35.924 --> 00:11:46.197 But one thing that Additive has done a poor job in really comparing is the resilience of materials and it's a little bit harder material property concept to wrap your head around.
00:11:46.384 --> 00:12:00.532 But if you look at the stress strain curves of any plastic, the resilience is really the area under the tensile stress strain curve up to the actual elastic limit of the polymer.
00:12:00.532 --> 00:12:06.378 So when most people look at data sheets, they look at what's the yield strength, what's the impact strength.
00:12:06.378 --> 00:12:19.427 But we really need to understand what the curves look like and start pulling out what exactly is our elastic limit, strain and our elastic limit, tensile stresses to be able to understand what type of damage tolerance these parts can take.
00:12:19.427 --> 00:12:29.456 If you were to compare those curves and we'll put some in the notes of the show if you look at PA11 and PA12, their elastic limit is between 3% and 4%.
00:12:29.456 --> 00:12:30.818 Elongation or strain.
00:12:30.818 --> 00:12:37.325 For the polyketone product, the elastic limit for elongation is around 8% to 10%.
00:12:37.325 --> 00:12:49.971 So there's a lot more area under the curve, a lot more overall energy that can be absorbed by polyketone and it's a really hard concept to wrap our head around but it's quite evident when you look at the stress-strain curves.
00:12:50.966 --> 00:12:55.975 I've always looked at this personally and this is my little mental model for me, right?
00:12:55.975 --> 00:12:57.198 Okay, so I don't know.
00:12:57.198 --> 00:12:59.693 Please correct me if I'm wrong, but this is how I've tried to understand it.
00:12:59.693 --> 00:13:05.778 That impact strength is kind of like some really sharp object hitting a bridge and breaking it, right?
00:13:05.778 --> 00:13:21.046 But what you're describing is really like everyday cars driving up and down that bridge and that bridge kind of responding in line to all the stresses of these cars, putting weight on, putting pressure on and going up and down that bridge and withstanding that pressure day in, day out.
00:13:21.729 --> 00:13:23.596 And that, to me, is the kind of thing that we always like.
00:13:23.596 --> 00:13:25.625 Focus on this, that high-end impact strength.
00:13:25.625 --> 00:13:26.969 But really is what can that?
00:13:26.969 --> 00:13:30.096 Uh bridge is the little mental ball on my head.
00:13:30.096 --> 00:13:44.008 Uh, can that thing sustain day-to-day, uh, you know, just kind of like continuous service temperature, where you're like, no, it's not about when the thing melts or when it starts to melt, but it's about where can we operate this polymer, you know, in a day-to-day kind of conditions?
00:13:44.008 --> 00:13:47.797 Uh, that it kind of will, you know, keep its properties?
00:13:47.797 --> 00:13:48.865 Is that kind of the right way?
00:13:48.865 --> 00:13:51.610 Am I at least in the right ballpark thinking about it like this way?
00:13:52.712 --> 00:13:55.158 That's a great way of describing resilience.
00:13:55.158 --> 00:14:02.197 It's how much load that part can take continuously without losing its actual shape of the part.
00:14:02.197 --> 00:14:10.946 So a heat cone can take a very large amount of deformation and load carrying capability before it starts to deform.
00:14:11.729 --> 00:14:27.375 So there's a lot of energy under that curve that it can continue to take and have all those repeated uses before it actually deflects Versus, like you said, the impact strength or the impact toughness is really about catastrophic failure, like I get hit by a baseball or something like that.
00:14:27.375 --> 00:14:36.511 Can that part take that impact Versus what's the repeated utilization of that part when I'm running or, or you know, using it to pick up something?
00:14:37.754 --> 00:14:44.702 and and to me always like if we see what we have a problem in within, in powder refusion particularly, and per polymer.
00:14:44.702 --> 00:14:57.229 We have a problem with maintaining young's modules, maintaining kind of our performance and ls's you know these kind of properties on the long term in the, in the, and we also have a problem with fatigue, strength and also a problem with like kind of impact generally, strength generally.
00:14:57.229 --> 00:15:15.320 So you're kind of saying that you know, on of these problems we solve very particular ones that are kind of really really helpful if you're trying to make something that's like a kind of a baseball glove, something that you're going to use every day and going to kind of put on the strain every day, right, yeah, so that actually refers to something that's very similar to resilience, which is recoverable work.
00:15:15.904 --> 00:15:22.110 So recoverable work is typically where a part is fatigued to the actual stress that it's going to be utilized at.
00:15:22.110 --> 00:15:28.898 Then what is the energy under the curve of that fatigued state?
00:15:28.898 --> 00:15:46.756 And we'll include some notes about, about typical polyketone recoverable works in the notes as well and that's really where you know that fatigue limit where does the actual part go when it gets to fatigue and how much work can that part do at that fatigue limit.
00:15:48.390 --> 00:15:51.485 It's also a really important part that we haven't covered well in the additive industry.
00:15:52.168 --> 00:15:54.533 So this is interesting and yours.
00:15:54.533 --> 00:15:57.331 You may speak to this too, but Luke, I'm just kind of curious.
00:15:57.331 --> 00:16:07.159 I mean, so you know, a lot of people are focused on the polyamides PA11, PA12, and even like the polypropylene.
00:16:07.159 --> 00:16:29.653 But it's like to me, while those perform and they perform well for a lot of things, I mean, there's a ton of people out on these with the prostheses that are, that are wearing prostheses and such like, if you bring it to my world, but like it really wasn't, until I heard about some of this other stuff that is important in plastics.
00:16:29.653 --> 00:16:39.065 It's, it's I don't want to say the industry's been, it's not talking about this stuff, but it's the polyamides and the polypropylenes.
00:16:39.065 --> 00:16:45.577 They don't have these features and so you don't necessarily talk about them.
00:16:45.577 --> 00:16:59.094 So it's, it's not a, it's not a story to tell essentially within, you know, within the current state of OEMs and powder bed fusion, Is that a fair statement?
00:17:00.505 --> 00:17:09.599 I would say that all polymers have these properties and any good engineer can design around the properties for a given problem statement.
00:17:09.599 --> 00:17:11.222 For a given problem statement.
00:17:11.222 --> 00:17:31.170 I think what Polyketone, the PK5000 product, does is it gives you better resilience, better recoverable work to allow for more flexibility of your types of designs and a lot more application spaces that maybe couldn't have historically been done in a single article build you can incorporate into a PK5000 build because of the added resilience and added recoverable work of these types of products.
00:17:31.190 --> 00:17:35.484 Okay, so what you're saying is that, yes, you can make pretty much thousand build because of the added resilience and added recoverable work of these types of products.
00:17:35.484 --> 00:17:39.409 Okay, so what you're saying is that, yes, you can make pretty much.
00:17:39.409 --> 00:17:45.527 You can, you can engineer around some of the shortcomings, I guess you would say, of any of the powders, make it thicker, thinner or what have you.
00:17:45.527 --> 00:17:54.847 But sometimes it may be looking for a different tool as well, and what tool is going to make the most sense for your particular product?
00:17:55.449 --> 00:17:55.891 absolutely.
00:17:55.891 --> 00:17:59.125 And you know people are going to sell what they've historically had right.
00:17:59.125 --> 00:18:04.038 So if it's not an option on your end of the platform historically you can't sell for it.
00:18:04.038 --> 00:18:07.733 But as we've seen with you know, altim 9085 and the fdm market.
00:18:07.733 --> 00:18:15.738 You know once that tool gets out there it starts to get adoption for its unique physical and chemical properties yeah, and so talk to us a little bit more about this material.
00:18:15.758 --> 00:18:21.807 All right, we got aromatic right, which is they smell nice, right, and aliphatic, so aromatic they have something with rings.
00:18:21.807 --> 00:18:36.130 Could you explain a little bit that difference a little bit, because between the stuff that people know and you already alluded to, like the difference a little bit with the regular peak and peck and if you're not familiar with them, if you're listening, that's kind of the material everybody asks for if they're looking for high material, high performance.
00:18:36.130 --> 00:18:52.519 It has some really interesting properties at the peak, is inherently flame retardant, has a really high service temperature, but it's really difficult to use, it's really difficult to crystallize and I think on that crystallization front, which is really the problem if you're printing these materials or trying to reuse them, that kind of thing, that's a huge problem.
00:18:52.519 --> 00:18:54.104 That keeps people from making big parts.
00:18:54.104 --> 00:18:58.926 It keeps people from industrializing this because it's super expensive in the first place and then you try to make your part.
00:18:58.926 --> 00:19:01.233 You end up with like kind of like brown sugar kind of thing.
00:19:01.555 --> 00:19:03.390 Where does this aliphatic, aromatic stuff?
00:19:03.390 --> 00:19:05.519 Um, you know, where does that feature?
00:19:05.519 --> 00:19:10.813 And and what are the big differences between, like the peaks we all know and hate well, Good question.
00:19:10.853 --> 00:19:30.007 So when you think of just aromatic versus aliphatic, all it really means is that aromatics have aromatic backbones that are much more rigid and resist deflection of the actual polymer backbone, versus the aliphatics have a very flexible backbone.
00:19:30.007 --> 00:19:34.996 So that's the easiest way to think about it just visually in your mind when you think about chemistry.
00:19:34.996 --> 00:19:46.794 And those very rigid backbones have high TGs, high melting points, versus the ones that have more flexibility it's easier for that polymer to start bending and moving.
00:19:46.794 --> 00:19:55.415 So it then really has a lower modulus, has a lower melting temperature compared to the aromatic type polymer.
00:19:55.415 --> 00:19:58.795 Same thing happens in aromatic polyamides.
00:19:58.795 --> 00:20:05.618 So there's aromatic polyamides that are very high temperature, like PPAs, versus the traditional long chain polyamides that we're used to working with.
00:20:05.618 --> 00:20:18.570 Same thing happens on both of those types of chemistries versus whether it's a polyamide or a polyketone how rigid that backbone is is dependent on the monomers you use to make.
00:20:18.632 --> 00:20:22.585 Okay, and then and then and let's, let's talk to us a bit about where do you see this playing a role?
00:20:22.585 --> 00:20:32.233 I mean because, on the one hand, it should be easier to process and, on the other hand, it's much cheaper, right, and on the other hand, we probably don't need like 420 degree muscle temperature stuff like that.
00:20:32.233 --> 00:20:35.759 The pulsing temperature also means that we can use different printers for this right.
00:20:36.704 --> 00:20:39.294 Yeah, so our polyketone is a powder-based product, right?
00:20:39.294 --> 00:20:43.576 So it's available in powder bed fusion processes that can be inerted.
00:20:43.576 --> 00:20:50.365 It doesn't require an extra environment to be printed so it can be utilized at standard utilization temperatures.
00:20:50.365 --> 00:20:53.776 So it's got very similar melting temperatures to PA12 and PA11.
00:20:53.776 --> 00:20:57.496 So it's commonly available in traditional SLS platforms.
00:20:57.496 --> 00:21:02.116 It doesn't require a high temperature SLS platform to run in, although you can run it in them as well.
00:21:02.116 --> 00:21:09.345 So that lower melting temperature does allow for it to be utilized in all different kinds of fielded systems today.
00:21:09.384 --> 00:21:11.089 Fielded systems today.
00:21:11.089 --> 00:21:29.031 And I would also say that in general, when people switch to polyketone and get it onto their printers, because of those tangible feel of the parts that we just talked about and the resilience and our global work with these types of parts, most of our customers that switch don't switch their printer back to the other materials they were using.
00:21:29.031 --> 00:21:32.025 They usually stay with the polyketone product because it is different.
00:21:32.025 --> 00:21:39.365 Once you get your hands on it it's hard to understand from a data sheet, but when you feel the resilience of the parts you can tell that it's different.
00:21:39.724 --> 00:21:41.538 Okay, and then talk to us about the economics of this.
00:21:41.538 --> 00:22:00.071 Because, okay, if you're looking at peak and ultem and all these kind of things that people use instead of this or partially instead of this, I guess you're using ultem or other materials not be able to recycle anything, so you're printing a whole powder bed.
00:22:00.071 --> 00:22:15.493 All that powder that is supporting that material needs to be thrown away, right, you can't recycle it not once, not at any time, and so that gives us very, very poor economics on if you're trying to make an implant or something like that, and that's really kept this market very small.
00:22:15.493 --> 00:22:22.595 So the most critical aircraft parts, the most critical implants in the body, and are you able to change those economics with the PK material?
00:22:23.545 --> 00:22:34.461 Yes, our PK5000 will have stable physical properties and build conditions at a 40% virgin content refresh rate for powder bed fusion processes.
00:22:34.461 --> 00:22:41.298 If you are less worried about your physical properties, you can move down to the 30% if desired.
00:22:41.298 --> 00:22:52.585 But most of our customers care about physical properties and that's why they started to look at Plaketon in the first place, and the majority of our customers are using that 40% virgin content for the refresh.
00:22:52.865 --> 00:22:56.817 So the economic is already like extraordinarily much better than some of these materials.
00:22:56.817 --> 00:22:59.354 But some packs also have kind of some refresh and all this.
00:22:59.354 --> 00:23:02.913 You know price-wise you don't have to disclose your price or anything.
00:23:02.913 --> 00:23:11.632 But we're assuming that this is also kind of more affordable than your standard peak or PAEK like the peak family grades, right.
00:23:14.345 --> 00:23:14.846 Yeah, absolutely.
00:23:14.846 --> 00:23:16.588 Standard, peak or paek, like the peak family grades, right, yeah, absolutely.
00:23:16.588 --> 00:23:23.874 I mean we're typically talking msrps in the uh 70 a kg range for this type of material, which is on par with many of the pa12s that you're going to be out there um today.
00:23:24.375 --> 00:23:38.392 And, of course, as with any user, the higher the volume that you utilize, the better the uh the pricing gets that's really cool and sometimes, like you know, your peak or something that could, could be several times that much to buy and then, of course, that refresh really affects that.
00:23:38.392 --> 00:23:44.474 It would actually probably drive that actual price much, much higher, of course, because you can't recycle any of it or you can recycle very little of it.
00:23:44.984 --> 00:23:47.484 Yeah, I mean for the comparable chemical resistance.
00:23:47.484 --> 00:23:56.535 We're five to seven times less expensive than a peak or a peck type product that you would typically find okay, yeah, that's really cool.
00:23:56.555 --> 00:24:04.184 And then and then also at the same, do you have that inherent flame retardancy as well that the the other peaks have no, you get that from that aromatic portion.
00:24:04.345 --> 00:24:06.351 So these are not inherently flame retardant.
00:24:06.351 --> 00:24:15.751 We are working on some flame retardant grades but it's not inherently flame retardant, like aromatics are okay, all right, I was just curious when I didn't know that, and okay.
00:24:15.771 --> 00:24:17.215 So where do you see this being used?
00:24:17.215 --> 00:24:17.905 I mean, where, where?
00:24:17.905 --> 00:24:18.969 What are the most applications?
00:24:18.969 --> 00:24:22.268 I know that the, the brand, is a happy bunny doing all sorts of cool stuff about that.
00:24:22.268 --> 00:24:26.267 I think brendan will talk about that later, but where, what kind of applications are people using this material?
00:24:27.448 --> 00:24:32.152 yeah, I'd say that our biggest use cases are high damage tolerance parts.
00:24:32.152 --> 00:24:42.162 So think of things that need to take a very big jolt or have heavy repeated stresses that are going on in these parts.
00:24:42.162 --> 00:24:47.217 We have customers in the sporting goods industry using these in-game prototypes.
00:24:47.217 --> 00:24:51.805 We have quite a bit of use cases in the barrier resistance area.
00:24:51.805 --> 00:24:54.008 We have quite a bit of use cases in the barrier resistance area.
00:24:54.008 --> 00:24:56.010 So it has very good fuel barrier properties.
00:24:56.010 --> 00:25:10.519 Compared to polyamides and even PVDF materials, it has superior barrier resistance or lower barrier properties to enable your fluids to stay within the parts that you're desiring.
00:25:10.519 --> 00:25:15.020 So things like fuel tanks, things like that your fluids to stay within the parts that you're designing.
00:25:15.020 --> 00:25:16.105 So things like fuel tanks, things like that.
00:25:19.164 --> 00:25:25.866 We've also seen a lot of interest in chemical handling and water connecting applications, where customers are utilizing these to either carry high pressure water or to carry chemicals into mixing stations.
00:25:25.866 --> 00:25:38.631 To consolidate traditional what would have been a manifold assembly that would be stainless steel welded or pvc welded type structures.
00:25:38.631 --> 00:25:43.826 They're moving to a single manifold type structure out of this type of system.
00:25:43.826 --> 00:25:47.452 And another interesting area is wear properties.
00:25:47.452 --> 00:26:13.509 We have some users utilizing these and their material handling and warehousing facilities where the parts need to see a lot of wear and the polyketone product has very similar wear and lubricious properties to a palm or acetyl type materials, so it's a really diverse materials property set that allows it to be utilized in a lot of diverse applications and I like that chemical resistance, that pressure stuff.
00:26:13.931 --> 00:26:18.109 That's kind of stuff where you often see like pvdf, those types of materials.
00:26:18.109 --> 00:26:20.275 Is that also something you're seeing people replace?
00:26:20.275 --> 00:26:22.026 Uh, ponnyville, that I don't know.
