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.
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Additive manufacturing (AM) is a process that creates a 3D object by using layer by layer approach to deposit material on the printer platform to form the desired 3D shape (Prakash et al., 2018). AM is able to provide the approachability to build, mass customization and has redefine the current production technology (Cam & Yanbing, 2015). The way to deposit the material and the printing process of the material will be manipulated by the information given by the computer-aided design (CAD) file and the process to convert it to stereolithography (STL) file. AM will have an important place in the future of manufacturing as numerous research and investigation need to be carried out to continuously improve the quality of 3D printed object (Wong & Hernandez, 2012). One of the AM systems is the fused deposition modeling (FDM). FDM 3D printing is a process which is used in the rapid prototyping and AM to create prototype and 3D product respectively. In FDM, the material which is in filament shape is melted when entering the heated nozzle and extruded out to stack a multiple layer of plastic on the printing platform. The material will solidify in a desired 3D shape by using the computer control process.
On the other hand, 3D product printed is not always 100% good in quality. Hence, the unqualified product or the fail printed part will be thrown away (Song & Telenko, 2016). The 3D printed object which is created by the Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene (ABS) filament will have a bad effect on the environment when it becomes redundant and as a waste from the lab or the industry due to failed print and support or extra material that need to be cut off from the product or prototype. Thus, a way to recycle the wasted ABS 3D printed product is needed to enhance the quality of environment and create an eco-3D printing in the rapid prototyping and AM process.
As plastic have highly beneficial material properties such as lightweight, high strength-to-weight ratio, low cost and easy to manufacture it has caused growth in global production which increases to 500% in the last three decades. The accelerated production and adoption of plastic has caused various extraordinary issue of disposal and recycling of huge amount of plastic. As plastic is produced from oil which is finite fossil-based resources and not biodegradable, so the recycling of plastic need to be investigated and increasingly important to environmental and resources issue. Thus, this paper produces the results on investigation of 100% recycled ABS printing quality and other material properties. Agreeably, plastic sustainable management needs to be solved as it becomes a serious problem in the modern day (Cruz Sanchez et al., 2017).
ABS filament in FDM process is made from the ABS material and is the most largely used and popular thermoplastics. ABS contains three monomers which are acrylonitrile, butadiene and styrene. Acrylonitrile is used as chemical and thermal enhancement, butadiene is used to improve the toughness and impact strength and the Styrene is make the surface of plastic become shiny and glossy. Although ABS is no biodegradable, it is able to be recycled. Hence, this investigation will be carried out for the method to recycle the ABS waste and compare the specimen quality that produced by the standard ABS filament and 100% recycled ABS filament.
AM aims to reduce material waste. However, it still creates a great deal of waste material due to printing error as most of the standard FDM 3D printer is used by the inexperienced user (Song & Telenko, 2016). According to Song & Telenko (2016), the amount of failed print is about 2.22 times from the predicted amount of waste produced. Hence, the first problem will be too much waste is create for the AM process and need to find a way to recycle the waste material. Furthermore, waste ABS material will cause negative effect on the quality of environment due to ABS material is non-biodegradable. In this situation, plastic residue will accumulate in environment and landfills due to a large volume of ABS material become redundant and take millions year to be degraded (Hopewell et al., 2009). Thus, the amount of waste material should be reduced by recycling it. Thus, FDM 3D printing process is still not an environment friendly process, so an eco-printing needs to be achieved and investigated.