Rheological study of waste porcelain feedstocks for injection moulding

Five types of hard porcelain powders for injection moulding have been studied, using the same commercial binder in all cases. These powders contained different amounts of recycled porcelain, since one of the principal aims of this work is to reuse waste porcelain in the injection moulding process. The evaluation of the flowability of different feedstocks was carried out using rheological parameters, like critical powder volume concentration (CPVC), melt viscosity, activation energy, yield stress, powder law index and rheological index. The correlation of these parameters with injection behaviour was established, in order to confirm the possibility of using this moulding process with recycled porcelain powders. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.