The Influence of different Screw Concepts while Processing Fibre Reinforced Thermoplastics with the Concept of Inline-Compounding on an Injection Moulding Machine

摘要

Today, the global market poses major challenges for industrial product development. Complexity, the wide range of variants, flexibility and individuality are just some of the features that products have to fulfil. Product series additionally have shorter and shorter lifetimes. Because of their high capacity for adaptation, polymers are increasingly able to substitute traditional materials such as wood, glass and metals in various fields of application [1]. But polymers can only substitute other materials if they are optimally suited to the applications in question. Hence, product-specific material development is becoming increasingly important [2]. The problem is that the traditional development process for new polymer formulations is much too complex, too slow and therefore too expensive. Product-specific material development is thus out of the question for most processors. Integrating the compounding step in the injection moulding process would lead to a more efficient and faster development process for a new polymer formulation, providing an opportunity to create new product-specific materials. This process is called inline-compounding on an injection moulding machine. In order to develop this innovative formulation concept, with the focus on fibre reinforced thermoplastics, different screw-concepts are compared with regard to the resultant performance characteristics in the part, such as mechanical properties and fibre length distribution.