Guides / Sourcing
Quoting PEEK: the Costs That Sink an Otherwise Good Job
September 24, 2026
Sources: manufacturer datasheets and published standards. See editorial standards.
A PEEK job looks attractive on the enquiry and turns thin at delivery for predictable reasons. The material is expensive enough that ordinary estimating habits break, and the process steps that protect the part are easy to leave out of the number.
This is the checklist a shop that runs PEEK regularly prices against.
1. Price the blank, not the part volume
On most machined parts, material is a rounding error. On PEEK it is frequently the largest single line.
Quote the stock you will actually buy: the bar length, the plate size, the offcut you cannot use for anything else. A 60 mm cube out of 70 mm plate means the customer is buying a 70 mm plate, and if that is not in the number it comes out of your margin.
This is also where you win goodwill. Telling a buyer that the same part from rod instead of plate saves a third of the material cost gets you the job and the next one, and it costs you nothing but the conversation. Our stock form guide is written for the buyer side of exactly that discussion.
2. Add a setup piece where the tolerance is tight
On a ±0.025 mm feature in an expensive material, the first piece is a real cost. Either price the stock for it, or say plainly that the quote assumes no setup piece and first article risk sits with the customer.
What does not work is absorbing it silently on a five piece order.
3. Cost tool wear on filled grades separately
Glass and carbon fibre destroy edges at a rate that does not resemble unfilled work. If your shop rate assumes a certain consumable cost per hour, filled PEEK breaks that assumption.
Keep a separate rate, or a consumable adder, for GF30 and CF30 work. And if you run separate tooling for filled grades to protect unfilled medical parts, that discipline has a cost too. It is worth having in the number rather than in the margin.
4. Put the oven hours in
A stress relief cycle on a thick section runs to thirty hours or more of oven time plus a second setup. That is not a rounding error on a small batch.
The trap is discovering it after quoting. If the drawing shows thin walls, deep pockets or a bore tighter than ±0.05 mm, assume the cycle is needed and price it. If the customer says it is not, that is their decision, made before the parts move rather than after. Our annealing calculator produces the schedule and the hours, which is a fast way to put a defensible number in a quote.
5. Quote documents as work, because they are
A lot certificate passed through is minutes. A certificate of conformance, a first article report, documented cleaning, double bagging and cleanroom packing are not.
Price them as line items. Buyers in medical and semiconductor work expect to see them and compare quotes that include them against quotes that do not, which is the most common reason two prices look inexplicably far apart.
6. Decide what a rush costs before you are asked
PEEK lead time is usually stock, not machine time. Common unfilled sizes ship in days, filled grades in large sections and tube can take weeks.
Know which sizes your distributor holds and which are order in, and price the rush accordingly. Promising three weeks on a section your supplier does not stock is how a good relationship ends.
7. Say what the quote assumes
Four lines at the bottom of a quote prevent most disputes:
- The grade and stock form you priced
- Whether a stress relief cycle is included
- What the tolerance assumes about inspection temperature
- What is not included: first article, documents, packing beyond standard
This costs nothing and turns a price into an offer that can be compared honestly.
The commercial point
Buyers sourcing PEEK are rarely hunting for the lowest number. They are hunting for a shop that will not surprise them, because the material is expensive and the parts usually go into something worse to fix.
A quote that shows the material line, names the stock form, includes the oven time and states its assumptions reads as a shop that has done this before. That is worth more than a discount, and it is the reason the same shops keep getting the requests.
Want requests that arrive with the grade, the temperature and the documents already specified? Register your shop and preview each one before you pay for it.
Frequently asked questions
How much scrap allowance should a PEEK quote carry?
It depends on wall thickness and tolerance rather than on a flat percentage. The honest approach is to price the stock you actually need including a setup piece, and to say so on the quote, rather than absorbing it and hoping the first article passes.
Should tool wear be a line item?
On filled grades it should at least be in your own costing, whether or not the buyer sees it broken out. Glass and carbon fibre change consumable cost enough that pricing a CF30 job at unfilled rates turns a good order into a loss.
Do buyers accept a separate material line?
Serious ones prefer it. Splitting material and machining shows where the price comes from and makes it obvious when a different stock form would save them money, which is the kind of answer that wins the next job.
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