In times of short product life cycles, additive manufacturing and rapid tooling are important methods to make tool development and manufacturing more efficient. High-performance polymers are the key to mold production for prototypes and small series. However, the high temperatures during vulcanization injection molding cause thermal aging and can impair service life. The extent to which the thermal stress over the entire process chain stresses the material and whether it leads to irreversible material aging is evaluated. To this end, a mold made of PEEK is fabricated using fused filament fabrication and examined for its potential application. The mold is heated to 200 °C, filled with rubber, and cured. A differential scanning calorimetry analysis of each process step illustrates the crystallization behavior and first indicates the material resistance. It shows distinct cold crystallization regions at a build chamber temperature of 90 °C. At an ambient temperature above Tg, crystallization of 30% is achieved, and cold crystallization no longer occurs. Additional tensile tests show a decrease in tensile strength after ten days of thermal aging. The steady decrease in recrystallization temperature indicates degradation of the additives. However, the tensile tests reveal steady embrittlement of the material due to increasing crosslinking.

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Abstract. Additive Manufacturing is a cutting-edge technology for the production of complex, functional, filigree and topology-optimized components. The growing demand for high-tech light-weight structures increasingly requires support in the design process of fine lattice structures. However, due to the high information density regarding lattice structures, which is based on many scientific research studies, the effective design of a specifically product-oriented lattice structure is made more difficult. The focus of this work is to provide a user-friendly information basis for the user or constructor. Therefore, this scientific work serves to show the first basic rules for the design of simple unit cells for additive lattice structures. The approach is based on the evaluation of the limiting manufacturing factors, which can be reduced both to the minimum and maximum angle and length, as well as to the cross-sectional geometry. The analysis reveals a considerable extent to the cross-sectional geometries and their welding pattern in various quality forms. The results obtained form the basis for the development of complex functional unit cells. However, the construction of a unit cell is only a part of a lattice structure, so additional factors must be added to the unit cell assembly.