Effect of extrusion parameters on primary recycled ABS: mechanical, rheological, morphological and thermal properties

This paper reports the effect of twin screw extrusion (TSE) process parameters on primary (1°) recycled acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) for possible 3D applications. The ABS (virgin/recycled) is one of the most widely used thermoplastic materials for fused deposition modeling (FDM) based 3D printing of functional prototypes. But hitherto little has been reported on improving the mechanical/rheological/morphological and thermal properties of (1°) recycled ABS while extrusion without any reinforcement (i.e. without secondary (2°) recycling). In this work the granules of 1° recycled ABS have been extruded after ascertaining suitable process parameters of TSE (namely: screw temperature, torque and dead weight). The results of study suggests that screw temperature 210 °C, 0.3Nm torque and dead weight of 13 kg are the best settings for TSE in the present case study. The TSE based extruded 1° recycled ABS has improved crash resistance properties (as modulus of toughness was significantly improved to 3.261 MPa (from 0.191 MPa (for non TSE processed) and 0.081 for virgin ABS).