Investigating the Effects of Injection Molding Parameters on the Mechanical Properties of Recycled Plastic Parts Using the Taguchi Method

Abstract

The growing amount of plastic parts produced nowadays makes the search for alternatives in recycling and the further use of these nonbiodegradable materials imperative. The degradation of the mechanical properties of recycled plastic products poses the primary limitation for the usage of recycled plastic. One of the foremost causes of mechanical property degradation is variation in processing parameters. An appropriate optimization method that effectively controls all influential processing parameters during manufacturing is therefore critical. This study investigates the effects of injection molding parameters on the mechanical properties of recycled plastic parts. The preliminary experiment is conducted by using Moldflow Plastic Insight (MPI) integrated with the L18 Taguchi orthogonal array (OA). The significant processing parameters obtained from the preliminary experiment were used to conduct the principal experiment. By adopting L9 Taguchi OA, the parts made from recycled plastic were produced by injection molding. ANOVA confirms that the most significant factor for flexural modulus of a recycled toolbox tray is injection time (∼40.49% percentage contribution). For stress at yield, the most significant factor is melt temperature with percentage contribution of about 43.34%.