PE/PP Testing v1

ECO-oh! supplied us with recycled PE/PP blend made of recycled household waste! With the material consisting of 75% PE & 25% PP it is challenging to find the optimal settings. Especially due to melting temperature differences, ranging from 125 to 160 °C.

Printing settings

Temperature: 170 – 185 °C

Printspeed: 3 mm/s

Printlayer: 5 mm

Ideally fusing the types of plastic together is a slow process, therefore the printing speed is set slow. Faster extrusion requires a higher temperature for the materials to mix, which is found to exceed the temperature limitations of the PE fraction.

Since PE & PP are crystalline polymers, heated air needs to be applied to prevent the material from too much stress during cooling. The results show on which parts heat was applied and what the effect is when the temperature differences during cooling are too large.