Investigations for Rapid Tooling Prepared With Waste Polymer-Based Hybrid Filament

Abstract

This article highlights the detailed procedure for development of rapid tooling (RT) by preparing feed stock filament wire from recycled/waste high density polyethylene (HDPE) and low density polyethylene (LDPE) polymers as base matrix with different particle sizes of SiC/Al2O3 as reinforcement. The HDPE and LDPE were collected from household waste and after manual segregation, different particle size (i.e., single particle size (SPS), double particle size (DPS), and triple particle size (TPS) in different proportions) of SiC/Al2O3 were added independently to HDPE and LDPE. The melt flow index (MFI) of these combinations/proportions was computed as per ASTM D1238-73 standard. After evaluation of MFIs, the best combinations were selected and used for filament wire preparation on twin screw extruder. The output properties, i.e., peak strength, break strength, peak elongation, break elongation, etc. were modeled for multi factor optimization. The filament wires was made to run on commercial fused deposition modeling (FDM) three dimensional printer (open source) for preparation of cylindrical pins (selected as RT) for wear testing. These pins were made to run on pin on disk apparatus for ascertaining the wear properties. Finally differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) was also performed to predict thermal behavior for field engineers.