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Five things to know before machining virgin PTFE

PTFE is soft enough to mark with a fingernail and slippery enough to pull out of a chuck. It machines beautifully once you respect a few rules.

2025-12-18 Machining 5 min read
Five things to know before machining virgin PTFE

PTFE is one of the easiest plastics to machine and one of the easiest to ruin. It is extremely soft, very slippery, and has a coefficient of thermal expansion roughly ten times that of steel. Each of those properties dictates a rule.

Support it fully. Because it is soft, the workholding pressure alone can deform it, and because it is slippery, normal clamping forces are not enough to hold it. A collet or a soft jaw machined to the part profile solves both. Keep tools very sharp with high rake and a large clearance angle, because a dull tool pushes the material instead of cutting it and leaves a smeared surface.

Control heat and measure late. PTFE grows about 0.12 mm per metre for every 10 C rise, so a part machined warm and measured cold will be out of tolerance. Let it stabilise at 20 C before the final measurement, and if you are holding a tight tolerance, machine, rest, then take a finishing pass. Finally, deburr gently — PTFE burrs are soft and fold over rather than break, so a light scrape rather than a rigid abrasive is the right tool.

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