Investigation of Recycled Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene for Additive Manufacturing

Abstract

One of the disadvantages of fused deposition modeling (FDM) is waste produced during the printing processes. This investigation focuses on using 100% recycled Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene (ABS) for the FDM process. The recycling begins with re-granule the waste ABS material and produces it into a new filament. The new recycled filament was used to print the test specimen. Investigation on the mechanical properties and the surface quality of the test specimen and comparison with standard ABS specimen was done. The result shows that the recycled ABS can be produced into filament with 335°C of extrusion temperature and 1.5 mm/s travel speed of the extruder conveyor. The surface roughness of recycled specimen is 6.94% higher than the standard ABS specimen. For ultimate tensile strength, there is a small difference in X and Y orientation between the standard and the recycled ABS specimen which are 22.93% and 19.98%, respectively. However, in Z orientation, it is 52.33% lower. This investigation proves that ABS can be recycled without significantly affecting its mechanical properties.