REDESIGN AND FABRICATION OF A PLASTIC EXTRUSION MACHINE

The current recycling machinery in operation is costly and tailored exclusively for large-scale industries, leaving a gap in addressing environmental challenges posed by plastic waste. To overcome this, there's a pressing need to develop an efficient recycling machine,particularly an extruder, capable of melting shredded plastics and extruding them into reusable plastic materials. This study thus centers on the redesign and fabrication of a plastic recycling machine (Extruder) suitable for small-scale applications, integrating an extrusion hopper mechanism. This was done by observing the machine for hindrances,disassembling the machine to confirm faults then fixing the faults. We then assembled the machine parts and ren tests to confirm its improvement and the result of the tests were tabulated,represented in graphs and used o calculate the improved efficiency of the machine.The efficiency that was recorded in Alphonsus et al, 2019 was modified here to be called thermal efficiency. While Alphonsus et al, 2019 recorded efficiency to be 79.25%, the thermal efficiency as related to the Archibong's et al, 2024 is recorded to be 98.30% and this shows a lot of improvement. The mechanical efficiency of the machine was not considered in Alphonsus et al, 2019 so we went ahead to find it by considering the power input and power output in the machine which is 78.30%. Therefore, the overall efficiency of the machine amounts to 76.97%.