Mechanical Recycling of a Short Carbon‐Fiber Reinforced Polyamide‐6 Developed for 3D Printing: Rheological and Mechanical Investigation

Besides household usage, Fused Deposition Modeling based 3D printing is expanding more and more also in an industrial setting, and this leads to the generation of a potentially large amount of waste, in terms of failed printed parts, supports, or end of spool. It is thus imperative to find a convenient way to recover such waste. Mechanical recycling is possible for this technology, since it is based only on thermoplastic materials. In this work, a polyamide 6 reinforced with short carbon fibre was recycled mechanically to investigate its re-use with the same technology, while maintaining its optimal mechanical properties. After grinding the 3D printed waste parts, the material was extruded to make a filament and was successfully 3D printed to obtain samples for mechanical and rheological testing. Tests were carried out both on virgin and recycled material for comparison purposes. Thermal and rheology analyses showed that the material degraded slightly due to thermo-mechanical reprocessing, but tensile tests ensured that the mechanical properties were not affected.