Editorial standards

Technical pages are only useful if you can tell where the numbers came from and what happens when one is wrong. Both are written down here.

Where the numbers come from

Material values on this site come from manufacturer datasheets for the grade in question and from published standards. Nothing is measured by us, because we do not run a lab, and we do not claim otherwise.

The standards that come up most in this niche, and what each one actually covers:

• ASTM F2026 covers PEEK polymers for surgical implant applications. It is a material specification, not an approval of a finished device.
• ISO 10993 covers biological evaluation of medical devices. Stock can be supplied with testing to parts of it. That testing belongs to the material, not to the machining.
• USP Class VI is a plastics classification from biological reactivity tests. It is commonly asked for and commonly misread as an approval. It is not one.
• ISO 23936-1 covers how thermoplastics are assessed for oil and gas media. Useful when a supplier claims downhole suitability.

What typical means here

Almost every number on this site is labeled typical, and that word is doing real work. Published values come from test bars made under controlled conditions. Your part is machined from extruded or compression moulded stock, carries residual stress, has fibre running in some direction and will be used at a temperature that is not 23 °C.

So we publish ranges rather than single values, we say what conditions a number holds at, and where a property changes sharply with temperature we say that instead of quoting the room temperature figure alone. If you need a value to design against rather than to shortlist a material, get it from the datasheet of the exact grade and lot you will buy.

What we do not publish

• A number we cannot trace to a datasheet or a standard.
• Client counts, network size, years in business or testimonials. None of those are checkable by a reader.
• Certifications for ourselves. We hold none, and we would have no use for one.
• The name of any shop, in a guide or anywhere else.
• Prices for parts. Cost pages explain what drives a quote, because a per part price published by someone who does not cut the part is a guess dressed as data.

Guides and matching are kept apart

Shops pay for matched RFQs. That is a lead fee. It never buys a mention in a guide, a link, a better position in a comparison or a place on any list, because none of those exist on this site. There is no sponsored content, no affiliate link and no paid review here, and if that ever changes it will be disclosed on this page before it appears anywhere else.

How vendors get named

Vendors who sell to these shops, meaning material distributors, tooling suppliers, oven makers, inspection services and packers, can send us a profile. Being in that file is not a listing and it is not a ranking. It is a record of what someone supplies, where they hold it and what they can document, so that a guide can name them when the technical context calls for it.

Four conditions, all of which have to hold at once:

• The guide has to be about their problem. A tooling vendor belongs in a page about cracking or tool wear, not in one about lead times.
• The detail has to be checkable. Where stock actually sits, the real lead time from it, what support is offered and in which language, a published spec. We write what we can verify and nothing beyond it.
• Named once, never ordered. One mention per guide, no best of list, no position that could be read as a ranking.
• Nothing changes hands. Placement is not for sale. There is no paid ranking, no sponsored guide and no affiliate link, and a vendor who offers to pay for one is told no and stays in the file on the same terms as everyone else.

Two things we will not do with a vendor relationship: pass shop or buyer contact details to them, and soften a technical page because it is inconvenient for someone in the file. If a vendor product is the wrong answer for a part, the page says so with their name absent rather than present.

Dates and review

Every guide carries the date it was published, and an updated date when it has been revised. A page that has not been revisited in a year still says so honestly rather than wearing a fresh date to look current. When a page is updated because it was wrong rather than because it grew, the change is described on the page.

Corrections

If a number here is wrong, tell us and we will fix it. Email with the page and what you believe the correct value is. Two things then happen: the page is corrected if you are right, and the correction is noted on the page rather than quietly swapped in.

This applies to opinions too. If a shop reads a machining page and says the recommendation is wrong in practice, that is worth more than a datasheet, and we would rather publish the disagreement than defend a paragraph.

Who writes this

The guides are published by PEEK MFG, the same operation that reads your RFQ. Not by a marketing agency, and not by a shop trying to fill its machines. If you want to know what that means for our incentives, it is set out in what this site is and what it is not.