Thanks to the efforts of a senior design team and the Society of Plastics Engineers (SPE), the IME department has a closed loop plastics recycling project in the plastics processing laboratory at the Parkview Campus.
Last Spring the senior design team of Brian Sather, Lucas Graham, and Ken Lothschutz assembled a sheet extrusion line in the lab. At the time, the line’s three major components – extruder, sheet die, and calendar rolls – were non-functional and required repair or modification.
During the project, the performance of the extruder was evaluated, a die adaptor was constructed to attach the die, and the three-roll calendar was refurbished and modified to modern safety standards. The refurbishment efforts were funded by a $2,000 grant from the West Michigan Section of SPE. A system was also developed to wind the sheet.
The lab now has a complete system for recycling polystyrene thermoforming material.
Brian Sather makes a thermoform license plate from a plastic sheet made on the extrusion machine.
“It allows us to have a closed loop recycling project within our lab,” said Kurt Hayden, an IME doctoral associate who served as a technical advisor to the senior design project. “We make parts, we grind parts, we remake the sheet stock, and we make parts again.”
Two courses are involved with the new system. In IME 2500 Plastic Properties and Process, plates are made, and in IME 3500 Production Plastic Process, the recycling process is used.
Sather, who has earned $4,500 through two SPE scholarships as an undergraduate, is now involved with the new extrusion line as a graduate student in the manufacturing engineering program.
Senior project design teammates Brian Sather (foreground) and Lucas Graham recycle waste thermoforming scrap using the sheet extrusion line in WMU’s Parkview Campus Plastics Processing Laboratory.
Brian Sather (left) and Kurt Hayden show two aspects of the plastics loop. In the photo on the left, Sather holds a thermoform license plate and Hayden’s arm rests on the plastic sheet roll from which license plates are made. The scrap on the table was cut from the license plate. In the photo on the right, Hayden handles plastic that was ground from license plate scrap and that will be recycled into a new plastic sheet roll.
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