Can you melt ABS plastic?

Abs plastic is toxic

As man does not live by news alone, we have decided to incorporate to our publication a line of more technical articles, perhaps somewhat cumbersome for those who only seek general information about 3D printing, but certainly very practical for those who are already immersed in this world and seek to deepen to another level.

To start this new line of articles, nothing better than talking about the liquid element, the ABS, and is that much of the 3d printers, almost all home or semi-professional use, use this printing material.

ABS is considered an amorphous thermoplastic. A thermoplastic is a plastic that, when exposed to relatively high temperatures, becomes deformable or flexible and even melts, while when sufficiently cooled, it hardens.

Each of the three building blocks provides different characteristics. Acrolonitrile provides rigidity, resistance to chemical attack, hardness and stability at high temperatures. Butadiene, toughness at particularly low temperatures and impact resistance; and styrene, mechanical strength, stiffness, gloss, hardness.

How to recycle abs plastic

At rest the temperature it reads makes sense, 20-22 degrees. I have tried with the default 230 degrees for ABS and the motor would stall when turning or file the plastic but I couldn’t get any more in. I have taken the whole hot end apart. I see that the plastic base where the extruder is mounted has no obstruction. In the hot end I see that there is a short metal tube that connects the square with the heating element and the area to dissipate heat. I noticed that the plastic went in well until it collided with the connecting tube, which is narrower than the ABS. I understand that that area has to be so hot that it would have to enter as liquid through that tube into the nozzle. I have tried +300 degrees (I had to modify the maximum temperature in the Marlin) and nothing. I did see that the coupling of the fan to the hot end was smoking, then when I removed the plastic I could see that it was hot but nothing else. Then I put it close to the heating element and there, LITTLE BY LITTLE, it softened and melted. I do not think that this is capable of generating the molten plastic that is needed to print a part (I say this from ignorance).

Plastic abs environmental impact

The melting process involves an increase in the heat of the polymer, which results from the increase in temperature and friction between the barrel and the screw. Friction and shear stresses are basic to efficient melting, since polymers are not good conductors of heat. An increase in temperature decreases the viscosity of the molten polymer; the same happens with increasing shear rate. Therefore, both parameters must be adjusted during the process. There are also standard metals for each polymer to avoid corrosion or degradation. With a few exceptions – such as PVC – most plastics can be used on the same machines.

ABS plastic

If we have a piece obtained from a mold, a perfect cube of 1 cm3, i.e., its dimensions are 10 mm by 10 mm x 10 mm made of ABS, it will weigh 1.05 grams given the density of the material at 23 degrees (1.05g/cm3).

We thus have in the crucible 1.14 cm3 of ABS polymer. Let us imagine that we have the steel mold with a cavity of 1 cm3 with which the cube that we have melted was made, that is, 10x 10x 10 mm and we have to introduce the material that we have melted in the crucible that, when it was in solid state, was 1 cm3 of material and formed a perfect cube of 1 cm of side, pouring the melted material into the mold by gravity.

To introduce this material into the mold, by gravity, we must wait for the material introduced into the mold to cool down so that it leaves space due to the volumetric contraction that will occur when the molecules are rearranged. In order to be able to pour more molten material, little by little we will be able to introduce the molten material that occupies 1.14 cm3 in the space of the mold that has a volume of 1cm3.Figure 1.