Keywords

1 Introduction

In the automotive industry, the hardware components are mainly focused because; new material equations and innovations are making vehicles lighter and expanding eco-friendliness [1]. Furthermore, progressively adaptable, stylishly satisfying structures are their extra benefits [2, 3]. For that, a lot of research has to investigate the new sources of a kind polymeric material that can be utilized in the advancement of bio-based and environment friendly composites [4,5,6]. The characteristic polymers offer less favorable circumstances than engineered polymers [7]; be that as it may, a standard polymer offers the crucial position of bio-degradability. These composites with bio-degradable nature will give ascend to reasonable, regular, inexhaustible materials with no negative impacts to the earth [8,9,10]. Right now, ABS is the important segment utilized in the creation of plastics housings for PC hardware, automobile consoles, and other comparative parts [11]. Despite of fact, the ABS monomers are not very harmful [12]. To accommodate to all bio-friendly composites, fibers were used as filler for the ABS matrix. There are a few difficulties inside cellulose particles, for example, the capacity to moisture absorption, yet they have auspicious properties as bio filler for matrix materials [13,14,15,16]. Cellulose fillers have the capability of enhancing the properties (e.g., thermal or mechanical) of polymers [16,17,18].

Lavanya et al. [4] reported the cellulose has been utilized to battle the concerns in supportability, and cellulose is a typical natural fiber. Cellulose is a carbohydrate made from thousands of glucose particles connected furthermore, because of its intra-and intermolecular hydrogen holding different requested crystalline courses of action are watched.

Nakiri et al. [18] reported the cellulose has an exclusive kind of mechanical characteristics which is probable to use as fillers to enhance the properties of composite material with void matrix materials. Composites with cellulose are lightweight, ease, and naturally degradable with enhanced mechanical and thermal properties.

Ponsuriyaprakash et al. [19] investigated the ABS material blended with Cellulose i.e., Recyclable and Bio-degradable material which enhances the mechanical, thermal characterization and their properties. ABS in the form of wire (1.75 mm diameter) is used in additive manufacturing technology which is used to manufacture all automobile, aero, marine, and mechanical spare parts or secondary components [19]. In the present work, polymer matrix composite samples were fabricated using hand layup method by varying different weight ratios (ABS: Cellulose—100 wt%; 95:5 wt%; 90:10 wt%; 85:15 wt%; 80:20 wt%). Thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) along with their morphological studies (XRD, FESEM) were characterized and evaluated. Also, the 3D printing filament wire was made from optimized 15:85 wt% of ABS: Cellulose composite material using the extruding machine.

2 Materials and Methods

2.1 ABS

Nowadays the ABS are mainly used in additive manufacturing (3D printing) to fabricate the products/components in the automotive, aerospace and marine industries. The ABS polymers are now replacing the metal components in the interior parts, when 3D printing ABS has experienced good strength and is mechanically sturdy and rigid. ABS also has good impact strength, high tensile strength and stiffness [19].

2.2 Cellulose

By means of several literature reviews, various materials are having blending properties with ABS could be absorbed is studied. After the far survey, the Cellulose is selected as a primary reinforcement because of their blending properties and their thermal stability and also based on easy availability, environment friendly, cost-wise lower than other materials and the cellulose available on powder form it makes easy to mix the materials.

2.3 Preparation of Composite

The ABS material is available only in pellet form and cellulose is in powder form. The fine mixture of ABS pellet and cellulose powder is not possible. So, the Dichloromethane is a reagent used to make soluble the ABS material without any property loss. Now, the ABS is converted into slurry form, it is made easily to mix the cellulose in a perfect mixture as per the ratio in Table 1. The fabrications of composites were made by simple hand layup process. After an even mixing of ABS and cellulose it forms like a slurry.

Table 1 Blending ratio
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So, the resulting slurry was transferred in a metal mold and dry for 48 h in a room temperature. Figure 1 illustrates the Composite Fabrication and Preparation method chart. As per Table 1 there are 5 samples that were fabricated first the ABS is taken as 100 wt% without adding cellulose reinforcement and further 90:10, 80:20, 70:30, 60:40, 50:50 wt% of ABS: Cellulose.

Fig. 1
The image depicts a method chart for composite fabrication and preparation. A B S material is in pellet form whereas cellulose is in powdered form and A B S and cellulose mixture which is in slurry form. It is not possible to make a fine mixture of A B S pellets and cellulose powder. So, Dichloromethane is a reagent used to make A B S soluble without causing any property loss.

Composite fabrication and preparation

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After the preparation process of all 5 samples, the product is disengaged from the mold and the following testing were carried out.

X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) testing is used to recognize the crystalline particles. XRD analyses were performed on a glass plate from 0° to 50° at a rate of 5℃/min. The results were exposed by graphical representation using Advanced Panalytical Xpert Pro X-ray diffraction instrument.

Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) is used to the analysis of failure, contaminant and general micro analysis and also to test the attainment of chemical composition on the surface by using Quanta FEG 250 instrument.

Thermogravimetric Analysis (TGA) is used to analyze the stability of heat in which the weight of a specimen was measured by changing temperatures by using TGA Q500 instrument.

Extrusion of optimized composite material in a wire form (1.75 mm of dia.) with 150 Bar pressure adapted to FDM technology by using MT-36 extrusion machine with a screw diameter of 35.6 mm and screw speed of 600 rpm. The methodology chart describes the step-by-step process of extrusion in Fig. 2.

Fig. 2
The methodology chart describes the step-by-step process of extrusion. Cellulose and A B S are mixed with the help of a Dichloromethane reagent and then the composite material changes to wiring form through extrusion. Then the wire is fed into the F D M machine and after printing the end product comes.

Layout of extrusion methodology

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3 Results and Discussion

3.1 FESEM Analysis

Figure 3a shows the SEM Micrograph of ABS which shows the smooth surface without any obstacles. Figure 3c–f shows the SEM Micrograph of ABS with Cellulose polymer Composites materials with different weight percentage like 95% ABS: 5% Cellulose, 90% ABS: 10% Cellulose, 85% ABS: 15 Cellulose, 80% ABS: 20% Cellulose. The FESEM results illustrate the fiber particles were blended richly with the equal distribution of cellulose fiber with ABS matrix material. The magnification scale varied due to the difficulty of location identity on the surface in different samples.

Fig. 3
A is SEM micrograph of a. pure ABS with a smooth surface and no obstacles and others of Cellulose and ABS are identified in the micrographs and the parameters are 100 micrometer for a, c, d, e, and for b parameter is 50 micrometer

a SEM micrograph of pure ABS, b Pure cellulose, c–f SEM micrograph of 5, 10, 15 and 20% of cellulose with ABS

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3.2 XRD Analysis

Figure 4 shows the XRD results of different weight percentages of Cellulose reinforced in ABS polymer. The spectrum peak angle 2θ valued 31.3° clearly proved the presence of cellulose fiber in ABS polymer material from the intensity [19] and it also exposed the uniform distribution of cellulose fiber in ABS polymer matrix composite materials. The longest spectrum peak specifies the ABS polymer material and the smallest spectrum peak specifies the cellulose fiber material. The peak also clearly shows the composition of ABS and cellulose at 5, 10, 15, and 20 wt% on in various slopes as indicated in the graph.

Fig. 4
XRD results of various weight percentages of cellulose reinforced in ABS polymer. In the x-axis spectrum angle 2 phi is taken whereas in the y-axis intensity (counts) is taken. As shown in the graph, the peak clearly shows the composition of ABS and cellulose at 5, 10, 15, and 20 weight percent on various slopes.

XRD analysis in different wt% of cellulose with ABS

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3.3 TGA Analysis

The thermal stability of the cellulose reinforced ABS composites was examined by TGA. Figure 5 shows the consolidated TGA curves of ABS/cellulose composites by different ratios. The minimum weight loss has been detected below room temperature and 100 °C, due to the loss of moisture content from cellulose fibers. At this point, the minimum weight loss was found on 85 wt% of ABS and 15 wt% of cellulose composite. Thermal stability of 85 wt% of ABS and 15 wt% of cellulose composite withstands the highest temperature of 310 degrees Celsius and exhibits 25 percentage of low weight loss.

Fig. 5
The consolidated TGA curves of various ABS/cellulose composite ratios. On X-axis the temperature readings are 50 degrees, 100 degrees, 150 degrees, and so on. In Y-axis the weight (%) are 92, 93, 94, and so on. In this graph, there are 5 types of the composition of ABS shown.

TGA analysis in different wt% of cellulose with ABS

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3.4 Extrusion

The optimized composite material was taken into the production of filament (wire) form which is adapted to the FDM 3D printing machine. The filament extruder machine used to produce filament was shown in Fig. 6.

Fig. 6
Figure 6 depicts the filament extruder machine used to produce filament.

Filament extrusion machine (MT-36)

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This extrusion machine is constructed with Hooper, twin screw extruder, heating element, feed nozzle. The optimized ratio of 85 wt% of ABS and 15 wt% of cellulose composite is crushed to a pellet form by using a milling machine. The crushed 85:15 wt% composite material is poured into the hooper and the process starts from twin screw extruder which is used to transfer the 85:15 wt% composite material into a heating element which semi-liquify the 85:15 wt% composite material and pushed into the nozzle which is set by a 1.75 mm of diameter. The 1.75 mm diameter filament is the most suitable dimension of wire used in the FDM machine. The resulted wire is completely cooled by a water tank which is shown in Fig. 7.

Fig. 7
Figure 7 represents Extruded filament cooling process. The 1.75 mm diameter filament is the best wire size for use in the FDM machine. The resulting wire is completely cooled by the water tank depicted in Fig. 7. In this tank 5 wires are cooled at a time. The tank is made up of metal.

Extruded filament cooling process

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Then the extruded filament wire shown in Fig. 8 was rolled by using a plastic spool on FDM machine.

Fig. 8
Figure 8 shows the Extruded filament. The filament is cooled using a water tank. The Filament wire was then rolled on a plastic spool before being fed into the FDM machine.

Extruded filament

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3.5 Fused Deposition Modeling

The additive manufacturing technique is well known as 3-Dimensional printing (3DP). In additive manufacturing, there are lot of methods and processes. Among those processes FDM i.e., fused deposition modeling is simple, mostly used in a wide range of applications. FDM is a layer-by-layer deposition process to manufacture structural objects through a computer-aided design (CAD) model using ABS blended with cellulose filament.

Figure 9 shows the process of 3D printing from 85:15 wt% of ABS: cellulose composite wire. This composite material doesn’t affect the FDM machine accuracy due to good thermal properties, which made a great quality of manufacturing. Nowadays most of the [15] automotive components are manufactured by the FDM process.

Fig. 9
Schematic diagram of the Process of wire production and printing. Processes are Filament Extrusion of Composite material in Wire form, Wire formed composite material, Printing Product by FDM.

Process of wire production and printing

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4 Conclusions

The effect of adding cellulose reinforcement in ABS polymer was investigated. Polymer matrix composites were fabricated by varying the weight percentages of the reinforcements with matrix material. The following conclusions summarize the morphological and thermal behavior of ABS based cellulose reinforced composite materials.

  1. 1.

    The simple hand layup method has successfully fabricated the ABS based cellulose reinforced composites with the following weight percentages:100 wt% ABS; 95 wt% ABS: 5 wt% cellulose; 90 wt% ABS: 10 wt% cellulose; 85 wt% ABS: 15 wt% cellulose; and 80 wt% ABS: 20 wt% cellulose.

  2. 2.

    FESEM micrograph showed the presence of cellulose reinforcements and properly mixed with the base matrix material of ABS.

  3. 3.

    XRD spectrum peak angle 2θ valued 31.3° clearly showed the presence and equal distribution of reinforcement with a matrix material.

  4. 4.

    The thermal analysis exposed the 85 wt% of ABS and 15 wt% of composite attains withstand the highest temperature of 310 °C and exhibits 25 percentage of low weight loss.

  5. 5.

    The 1.75 mm diameter of filament (wire) used in the FDM 3D printing machine was manufactured from optimized 85 wt% of ABS and 15 wt% of composites by using an extrusion process.