Recycling of Aluminum Chips by Hot Extrusion with Subsequent Cold Extrusion

Abstract

In this paper, the direct conversion of AA6060 aluminum alloy machining chips into finished products by hot extrusion with subsequent cold extrusion is investigated. For hot extrusion, two different types of extrusion dies, a conventional flat-face die and an experimental die, are used. The experimental die combines the process of equal channel angular pressing with the process of hot extrusion in a single die, which increases the strain and pressure affecting the chips during extrusion, both critical factors for achieving sound chip bonding. Subsequently, the chip-based extrudates are machined to fabricate chip-based preforms for the cold extrusion experiments. In order to investigate different processing routes, forward rod extrusion and backward can extrusion trials were conducted. In all steps, cast material was processed similar to the chips as a reference. The results showed that the quality of the chip-based finished parts strongly depends on the bonding quality between the individual chips, determined during the hot extrusion process.