Genesis Medical Plastics develops calendering to yield implantable PEEK film

Genesis Medical Plastics has developed production-scale calendering to convert medical grade and implantable PEEK into thin sheet and film. The technology adds to the medical polymer conversion services it provides in injection molding, extrusion of machinable shapes, and CNC machining.

PEEK has seen high growth in medical device applications. Unlike grades sold commercially, implantable PEEK is available to device manufacturers from polymer producers under restrictive conditions. Device manufacturers either process the polymer in-house or align with a medical polymer conversion specialist for production.

Calendering yields highly uniform PEEK film.

Injection molding and machining of stock shapes have been the prominent methods for producing implantable PEEK components. The lack of commercially available implant grade PEEK film and thin sheet has hampered advancements in medical devices.

The company's calendering operation converts implantable PEEK into thicknesses from 0.1mm to 1.0mm, in rolls, spools of strip, and custom-sized sheets. The film can be precision laser-cut or stamped into intricate configurations for implantable bioelectronic applications including connectors and components for defibrillators and pacemakers.

“Our investments in calendering for medical PEEK came in response to customers’ requests. Starting with FDA F2026 certified PEEK resin and hitting the necessary targets for reliable production with consistent thicknesses, physical properties and overall quality led us to engineer our own production equipment and process control systems” said Stephen Kramer, General Manager at Genesis Medical Plastics.