The ECOLAJE project delves into the advantages of additive manufacturing to make moulds for the thermoforming of ESD materials and investigates recycling strategies for ESD trays made from these moulds.
GAIKER Technology Centre, a member of the Basque Research & Technology Alliance, BRTA, is participating in the ECOLAJE project, whose main objective is to optimise the thermoforming of ESD packaging, using moulds made by additive manufacturing in combination with various recycling strategies, as well as the use of post-industrial and/or post-consumer material.
In a project to make containers or packaging using the thermoforming technique, but gaining in speed and flexibility, it is very useful to make the moulds by means of additive manufacturing. This technology enables the integration of additional features in the moulds, such as cooling channels and surface textures, which improves the quality of the parts produced and reduces their production cycle times.
The ECOLAJE project seeks to dive into the benefits of using additive manufacturing to make moulds for the thermoforming of ESD materials, so that they can be used in the manufacture of trays to transport electronic products so that they do not undergo any electrostatic discharge during handling and transport, thus avoiding damage to electronic circuits. Similarly, it aims to promote the circular economy by researching, on the one hand, different strategies for recycling ESD packaging and, on the other hand, the manufacture of these trays from recycled and post-consumer materials.
This research is carried out in different phases, starting with a full study of FDM materials and the most suitable materials are selected to produce the moulds. Subsequently, the requirements of the parts to be thermoformed are determined in order to define a procedure for the verification and study of their deterioration. In the following phases, research is carried out into the design and development of moulds for thermoforming by additive manufacturing and their validation, as well as how to improve the sustainability of this process, considering different recycling strategies for ESD trays and analysing the functional deterioration of thermoformed parts, especially the loss of the ESD property (loss of surface resistivity).
GAIKER is mainly involved in the latter activities, leading the "Recyclability strategies for ESD materials in thermoformed parts” work package, in which the research of different recycling strategies is proposed and the variation in the ESD properties of the manufactured packaging is studied in each case. The aim is to evaluate the best strategy to optimise recycling cycles while maintaining functional properties (anti-static).
This project, financed by the Basque Government as part of its grant programme for collaborative research in strategic areas, ELKARTEK 2023, involves IKOR Technology Centre, S.L. (project leader) and the School of Engineering of the University of Navarra, TECNUN, in addition to GAIKER, expert in the development, processing and characterisation of plastic compounds and in recycling and the circular economy.
The project is subsidised by the Department of Economic Development, Sustainability and Environment of the Basque Government (ELKARTEK 2023 Programme).
