QUADRANT ENGINEERING PLASTIC PRODUCTS’ KETRON® PEEK-1000MATERIAL DELIVERS DIMENSIONAL AND TEMPERATURE STABILITY TO H&O EQUIPMENTS CRYOPEN®

TIELT, BELGIUM – K 2004 – Quadrant Engineering Plastic Products’ (QEPP) materials delivered critical performance properties to a cryo therapy instrument developed by the Belgium firm, H&O Equipments (www.ho-equipments.com). The device is called a CryoPen® and it freezes localized sections of human tissue, thereby destroying them while keeping the tissue’s fiber structure.

H&O Equipments designed the body of its CryoPen to have an aluminum body housed in a plastic grip. The pen has three crucial elements, all located at its head and all machined from QEPP’s black KETRON PEEK-1000 material.

Medical treatment with the pen involves N2O gas (i.e. laughing-gas) flowing from a tank through holes in the pen’s nozzle. These holes measure 0.03 mm and the gas flowing through them is -89º C. These critical parts of the pen must undergo daily sterilization by steam inside an autoclave, where the temperatures reach 135º C.

Although the pen’s use is simple, its production thresholds are extremely demanding. The tip of the pen’s tube is produced by an excimer laser that drills a hole only 30 um in diameter.

H&O Equipments required a lightweight, medically compliant material that could deliver excellent temperature resistance, dimensional stability, and the ability to be machined to extremely tight tolerances. QEPP’s KETRON PEEK-1000 not only met these requirements, it offers material characteristics almost corresponding to those of steel.

KETRON PEEK-1000 is a general purpose grade PEEK material. It is unreinforced and offers the highest elongation and toughness of all PEEK grades. The newly available black KETRON PEEK-1000 is ideal for instrument components where aesthetics are important. It also excels in seal components where ductility and inertness are essential.

KETRON PEEK-1000 black offers outstanding steam and wear resistance. Products that are machined from it maintain excellent physical properties after repeated use, even with frequent exposure to 250° C temperatures from hot water or steam.

Other key features of KETRON PEEK-1000 black include very low moisture-absorption; inherently good wear- and abrasion-resistance; and excellent chemical resistance. The material is resistant to weak acids, alkalies, ketones, ethers, esters (acetone), hydrocarbons, chlorinated solvents, alcohols, and inorganic salt solutions.

Reader enquiries

Quadrant EPP
Hardstrasse 5
5600 Lenzburg
SWITZERLAND
Switzerland
+ 41 62 8858 150
contact@​qplas.com
http://epp.quadrantplastics.com

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Notes for editors

Quadrant Engineering Plastic Products (QEPP) is the world leader in the manufacture of engineering plastics in stock shapes (rod, plate, tube) for machining. QEPP also produces custom nylon castings and finished components. QEPP’s General and Advanced Engineering Plastics portfolio includes the broadest range of standard and custom shapes for machining and is available through its worldwide operations, technical support centres and authorized distributors.

The Quadrant Group is a global leader in high-performance polymer material solutions in the form of semi-finished and finished products. These specialty engineering thermoplastics and composites are superior in performance over metals and other materials, and are used in a growing number of applications developed with leaders in a wide range of industries.

Learn more about Quadrant at www.quadrantplastics.com.

ERTALON®, NYLATRON®, ERTACETAL®, ERTALYTE®, CESTIDUR®, TECHTRON®, KETRON®, FLUOROSINT® and SEMITRON® are registered trademarks of the Quadrant Group.