Chemical Based Blending of Reinforcement in ABS for 3D Printing Applications

Abstract

Highly stable long-chain molecular structure of thermoplastic polymers imposes critical issues worldwide related to their management. Also, depletion of natural resource like wood at alarming rate creates serious environment problems. Researchers have successfully blended (mechanically) various reinforced materials into secondary (2°) recycled acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) for recycling purpose but hitherto the effect of chemical assisted blending on the properties of the fabricated composite have not been explored yet. So, in this book article, composite fused filaments (for 3D printing applications) of 2° recycled ABS as matrix reinforced with wood dust (WD) were prepared by using twin screw extruder (TSE) through a novel fabrication technique of chemical (acetone) blending. The TSE process parameters namely extrusion load, temperature and speed/rpm were varied to explore the effect of processing conditions on the various properties of the composite filaments. The results highlighted that reinforcement of WD improves the melt flow index (MFI) of composite filament as compared to 2° recycled ABS. However, as the percentage of reinforcement increases beyond a certain value, the MFI starts decreasing. The parametric settings of 10kg load, 225°C extrusion temperature and 90rpm speed yields the combined optimized values of break strength and percentage break elongation (32.17MPa, 6.87%) for composite filament (ABS+WD). Further, a comparison has been made for the mechanical and thermal properties of WD reinforced composite filaments prepared by both chemical and mechanical blending.