Plastic Waste Management by Recycling of Polymer with Reinforcement of Metal Powder for Prototyping, Milling and Drilling Applications

Introduction

1. To enhance reusability of plastic waste by reinforcement of metal powder for building of functional prototypes by using fused deposition modelling (FDM)
2. Dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA) of waste plastic based functional prototypes for engineering applications
3. To perform friction welding of dissimilar plastic waste material in drilling applications
4. To perform the parametric optimization of dissimilar plastic waste material using drilling set-up
5. To perform friction stir welding (FSW) of dissimilar plastic waste material for process development
6. To perform parametric optimization for FSW of dissimilar plastic based material using milling set-up for batch production activities

Melt flow tester	Optical micrographs for reinforced Fe metal powder joints at magnification of 100X

Achievements

In the present work an effort has been made to use waste plastic with some reinforcement of metal powder for prototyping, drilling and milling application. A filament wire was prepared by taking two known material in powder form of which one is waste plastic (HDPE/LDPE) and the other is metal powder. Initially filament wire was prepared by taking these two materials with single particle size i.e. the reinforcement which will be mixed is only of single size. After preparing wires, properties of filament wire like yield strength, ultimate tensile strength, %age elongation, Young’s modulus were optimized and checked on the basis of MFI (melt flow index) i.e. wire was compared with the MFI of standard ABS filament wire. After that filament wire was prepared from batch production point of view. Once the filament trial was a success on commercial FDM setup (available at Institute), the products based on reinforced waste plastic were used for the DMA study.

In the second stage the developed filament was used for preparing the cylindrical surface (which acts like a drill for rapid tooling application) and parametric optimization for friction welding for dissimilar plastic based material with the modified drilling operation on Lathe was performed. In the third stage two dissimilar plastic based specimens were studied for FSW application on the milling set up.

The outcome of this study is useful for reducing the plastic/polymer waste. The developed technology is in line with the Government of India initiative “Make In India” as this has lead to the in-house development of FDM wire filament.

• For further information please contact

Guru Nanak Dev Engineering College, Ludhiana
Gill Road, Gill Park, Ludhiana 141006
Email : rupindersingh78@yahoo.com