Prod. Eng. Res. Devel.
DOI 10.1007/s11740-016-0682-7
PRODUCTION PROCESS
Reprocessing of aluminum chips by hot backward extrusion
Bernd-Arno Behrens1 Anas Bouguecha1 Kai Brunotte1 Matthias Dannenberg1
Adis Huskic1 Martin Bonhage1
Received: 26 January 2016 / Accepted: 8 June 2016
German Academic Society for Production Engineering (WGP) 2016
Abstract In this work the recycling of cold pressed alu-
minum chips by a hot backward extrusion process is
investigated. By using a non-melting approach common
casting losses are avoided. After cold compaction, the hot
backward extrusion process is carried out with a high speed
hydraulic forming press under variation of forming speed,
temperature and force. Subsequently, forged parts were
analysed by mechanical tests and metallographic exami-
nations. The investigations have shown that aluminum
chips can be consolidated into a semi-finished part with
local relative densities up to 100 %. In comparison to
common continuous non-melting chip recycling techniques
the investigated process chain has the potential to reduce
the effort of post-treatment noticeable by producing semi-
finished components from aluminum waste.
Keywords Aluminum chip  Direct recycling 
Hot backward extrusion  Solid state recycling
1 Introduction
After its discovery in the early nineteenth century [1],
aluminum has become an important construction material
for having noteworthy mechanical properties in lightweight
design applications [2]. Additional advantages are high
corrosion resistance as well as a good machinability. On
the other hand, aluminum is still expensive to produce. The
& Martin Bonhage
bonhage@ifum.uni-hannover.de
1 press. The extrusion takes place at temperatures from 350
Institute of Forming Technology and Machines (IFUM),
Leibniz Universitat Hannover, An der Universitat 2,
30823 Garbsen, Germany
energy consumption of the production process is at least
twice as much than steel. Most of the energy consumption
takes place at the electrolyse process while aluminum
oxide (Al2O3)recovered from natural bauxiteis divi-
ded into unalloyed aluminum, namely primary alu-
minum and CO2. Contrary to the expensive production of
primary aluminum, the energy consumption of the recy-
cling process of used aluminum, also known as secondary
aluminum, is considerably lower. Given these challenges
in producing primary aluminum, recycling of aluminum
becomes more and more an important economic and eco-
logical approach [3].
One common recycling method of aluminum is
remelting and casting parts in semi-finished or finished
forms. Overall, this is an efficient recycling method for
most aluminum scraps except of thin-walled scrap (e.g.
chips). It can be observed that especially chips, with its
large surface to volume ratio, suffer high material losses
mostly due to contaminants from the production process
(cooling lubricant, oil etc.), combustion (oxidation), slag
formation and unadapted furnace settings [4].
1.1 Chip recycling without melting
Several studies, which are presented below, have investi-
gated the possibility of recycling chips by making use of
various forming methods such as extrusion, pressing,
forging and rolling.
In 1945, STERN set forth a patented method of a direct
recycling process (without melting) of aluminum chips
[5]. At this approach chips are pressed by a hydraulic
press to bodies and subsequent charged into an extrusion
to 450 C and a pressure of 270 up to 600 MPa. A direct
recycling process can be reasonable both economically
123

and ecologically; besides, a recycling rate of up to 95 %
leads to a reduction of the energy consumption of about
31 % and decreases labour costs up to 60 % [4].
According to the present research, the existence of shear
forces is strongly recommended to achieve an accept-
able part quality. Shear forces tend to create additional
relative movements between the aluminum chips which
cause the oxide layer (Al2O3) to break up; thus enabling
the bonding of aluminum surfaces [6, 7]. In conjunction
with high pressure and temperature diffusion process is
strongly activated [4]. One method of generating high
shear forces is an extrusion process, which was success-
fully used for the consolidation of chips out of magnesium
[8]. A continuing approach is to extend the hot extrusion
process subsequent by a cold extrusion process to produce
high quality chip-based finished products. It was observed
that the deformation route during hot extrusion is critical
in order to produce high quality chip-based finished parts.
Furthermore, Haase et al. investigated the influence of the
die design on the welding quality of AA 6060 chips
recycled by hot profile extrusion. The comparison of a
conventional and an integrated equal channel angular
pressing extrusion process (ECAP) had shown that chips,
extruded by an integrated ECAP, have comparable stress
and strain values than the corresponding processed cast
billets [9]. Furthermore, Duflou et al. [10] had shown that
the ECAP extrusion route has a significant reduction on
the environmental impact (factor 24) against remelting
and extrusion.
Sherafat et al. [11] extended the hot extrusion of alu-
minum chips creating a two-phase material by adding pure
aluminum powder, as a binder, to AW 7075 chips. Suzuki
et al. [12] studied the recycling of 6061 aluminum chips
using hot extrusion and hot rolling and showed that recy-
cled materials have the same or higher strength and cor-
rosion resistance than those of non-recycled. Chiba et al.
combined cold extrusion and subsequent cold rolling. It
was also possible to achieve mechanical properties com-
parable to the observed EN AC-42100 ingot. Moreover, the
authors indicate that by applying only an extrusion process
coarse voids occurred in regions where insufficient plastic
strain was introduced [13]. Ab Rahim et al. [14] composed
an actual review of the trends and used concepts for
recycling aluminum chips by hot extrusion process.
Another method is the axial hot pressing of aluminum
chips at 500 C [6]. The bonding quality can be improved
by increasing pressure and holding time, according to the
findings of Gronostajski and Matuszak [4], but a sufficient
bonding quality cannot be obtained due to the absence of
major shear forces. Therefore, the authors applied a sub-
sequent extrusion process and stated that cold compaction
combined with hot extrusion leads to the optimum process
in terms of bonding and cost efficiency.
123
Prod. Eng. Res. Devel.
A process called Bulk Mechanical Alloying (BMA)
successfully combines extrusion and forging processes in
which aluminum chips are periodically hot extruded and
upsetted up to 500 cycles before the final hot forging step
was applied. Two separate movable stamps and a tapered
die are used in the process. By choosing an extrusion ratio
of 1.44 and actively cooled tools (B60 C) the tensile
strength after hot forging (500 C) depends on the number
of cycles and can be up to 2.4 times higher than bulk (EN
AC-44100) because of grain refinement [15].
Another approach is the use of severe plastic deforma-
tion (SPD) operations. Especially the equal channel angular
pressing (ECAP) method, as described, is able to recycle
successful chips from aluminum [9] and even titanium
[16]. Abd El Aal et al. [7] used successfully a HPT (high
pressure torsion) process to achieve fully dense recycled
aluminum samples (EN AC-46200). In [3], Shamsudin
et al. provided a review of actual solid state recycling
techniques. One important issue they addressed is the need
to further investigate the effects of oxidation on hot
extruded aluminium.
1.2 Outline of the article
The state of the art shows that aluminum chips can be
recycled without a remelting-process by the use of pro-
cesses providing high forming degrees and sheer strength.
The disadvantage of common processes is that within
comparatively long production times only bulk material
can be produced. A further processing by major turning
operations and heat treatment is usually necessary.
This article deals with principal investigations of an
alternative non-melting recycling process for aluminum
chips which is able to consolidate the chips into a near net
shape model. For this purpose, a hot backward extrusion
process was applied to manufacture semi-finished compo-
nents out of cold pressed chips. Besides an increasing
production time and reduced post-processing an integrated
heat-treatment can be included in the process. In Sect. 2 the
used process routine is described. Section 3 deals with the
product properties after forming such as density, hardness
and tensile strength.
2 Experimental study
The chips were fabricated out of heat treated (T6) AW
2007 and AW 7075 aluminum alloy bulk material by
turning operation. In Table 1 the compositions of the
examined alloys are shown.
A hot backward extrusion process was applied after cold
pressing. Contrary to commonly investigated continuous
chip recycling routes [14], the introduced process chain has
Prod. Eng. Res. Devel.

Table 1 Alloying elements of

Composition (wt%)
the tested aluminum alloys AW
2007 and AW 7075 (DIN EN Si Fe Cu Mn Mg Cr Zn Ti Pb Ni
573-3)
AW 2007 0.8 0.8 3.34.6 0.51.0 0.41.8 0.1 0.8 0.2 0.81.5 0.2
AW 7075 0.4 0.5 1.22 0.3 2.12.9 0.20.3 5.16.1 0.2

chips and the corresponding bulk volume of the same

Fig. 1 Process chain of the investigated aluminum-chip recycling
process in comparison to established chains
the potential to manufacture complex parts with a
decreased post-processing effort, less chip waste and faster
process times (Fig. 1).
The fabrication of the chips took place in a dry and clean
condition without the use of cooling lubricant. In practice a
previous cleaning and drying of the chips is unavoidable.
Nevertheless, actual research fields such as minimum
lubrication for metal machining or high speed cutting are
expected to decrease the ecological pollution by reducing
the required lubrication noticeable [17].
Machined chips can be characterised by the R-value
which states the relationship between the volume of loose
material amount. With a low R-value of 5 and lesser (1) a
densification in one stroke is possible (Table 2). Bigger
chip sizes led to a decrease in bulk density and thus a
previous shredding process will be necessary [18].
volumechips
R 1
volumematerial
The chips were uniaxially force limited pressed to
cylinders ( 36 mm, H = 28 mm) with a hydraulic press
(pressing force 600 kN). To achieve a homogenous and
high density, compaction of the samples were carried out
by using a two-side uniaxial pressing tool with a maximum
pressure of approximately 600 MPa. The die is mounted on
springs which cause the die to move in press direction due
to friction forces between the chips and the inner die wall.
This kinematic ensures a relative movement against the
ejector and thus a two-sided pressing operation is applied
(Fig. 2). The advantage over a one sided pressing operation
is that a more homogenous density distribution can be
achieved [19].
Subsequently, the heated parts were manually fed into
the closed hot backward extrusion die (Fig. 3) which was
preheated to 300 C by heating jackets.
Hot extrusion processes were carried out with different
press speeds (20, 100, 200 mm/s) and maximal press forces
of 125, 175 and 250 kN on a hydraulic press (AP&T, LPS
4000-13). To reduce friction and adhesion between the
pressed parts and the die, a spray lubricant was used
(EKamold EP Aerosol). Figure 4 shows the used process
chain. To investigate the forging quality in terms of visible
cracks, pores, density and hardness, the extrudates were
centrically separated by wire-cut EDM (electrical dis-
charge machining). From another batch of extrudates ten-
sile test samples were extracted by turning operation and

Table 2 Turning chip

composition and measurement
points (cutting speed
vc = 400 m/min; spindle speed
D = 2500 U/min; depth of cut
ap = 0.25 mm; feed R Length Width Thickness
[mm] [mm] [mm]
f = 0.6 mm/U)
AW 2007 4.8 3.8 1.8 0.4
AW 7075 3.7 3.7 1.2 0.4

123

Fig. 2 Tool setup for cold pressing
quasi-static tensile tests were carried out (Dynamess S100/
ZD). The measured values for displacement and force are
converted to engineering stress and strain. The calculated
stressstrain diagram was the average of three repetitive
measurements.
Afterwards, the microstructure of the separated chips is
metallographically examined and furthermore, macro
hardness and densities were measured along the extrudate.
For metallographic examination the etching method
according to Barker was used. The grain size was deter-
mined by a graphical linear analysis. The average linear
grain size was calculated by determining the quotient of an
array of lines (measuring length) and the number of crossed
grain boundaries by the array. The macro hardness
(HV 10) was measured in several sections along the shaft.
Following, a batch of extrudates was sawed into pieces to
measure the density in every section by the Archimedean
principle.
Fig. 3 Hot backward extrusion
tool setup (left), geometrical
dimensions of the upper die
(right)
123
Prod. Eng. Res. Devel.
Fig. 4 Lean process chain as used
3 Results and discussion
3.1 Die filling of hot backward extruded chips
Due to full contact between tool and the hot extrudate, as
well as the high thermal conductivity of aluminum, rapid
cooling through heat transfer might occur. As seen in
Fig. 3 the upper die could only heated indirectly by the
upper heating jacket. Thus, mould filling of the extrusion
die was achieved by increasing the forging temperature.
Figure 5 shows the influence of forming speed (left) and
forming temperature (right) on the forming forces. It is
seen that higher forming speeds as well as higher forming
temperatures lead to a decrease of the force enhancement.
This observation is rather untypical since it was expected
that an increasing forming speed lead to higher forming
forces. An explanation might be an overlap of increasing
force at higher forming speeds and an increasing force due
Prod. Eng. Res. Devel.

Fig. 5 Influence of forming

speed (left) and forming
temperature (right) on the
forming forces

Fig. 6 Local density of hot

extruded aluminum chips [AW
7075 (left), AW 2007 (right)]

to rapid cooling. Thus the occurred cooling seemed to be oxidation formation during the heating might explain this
dominant against the influence of the forming speed. For behaviour.
further investigations only fully shaped parts were used.
3.3 Hardness and microstructural investigation
3.2 Density of hot extruded parts
Macro hardness (HV 10) measurements were performed
The extrudates were divided into segments and in the along the extrudate. Compared to the bulk material (aver-
following the relative density of each segment was mea- age 163 HV 10), hardness of AW 7075 chips is reduced
sured by the Archimedean principle. Figure 6 shows for about 37 HV 10 in average. Chips out of AW 2007 had an
example the resulting relative densities for each segment average hardness of 92 HV. The average reduction
of individual extrudates. It can be observed that for both between AW 2007 bulk and AW 2007 extrudate hardness
alloys, namely AW 2007 and AW 7075, the relative lies at 26 HV 10 (Fig. 7). The overall decrease of the
density decreases at the top of the extrudate. This beha-
viour can be explained by formation of a dead metal
zone and is characterised by a low degree of local
deformation. It is process-related and inevitable in rod
extrusion processes.
It is noticeable that from segment c up to segment g AW
7075 shows even higher relative densities than of bulk
density (Fig. 6, left). This might be due to the high amount
of magnesium, zinc and copper and thus the formation of
heavy oxide and intermetallic compounds, occurring dur-
ing the heating. In comparison to AW 7075 the relative
density of AW 2007 is almost slightly lower than of its
bulk material. Only in segment e a relative density of
100 % was achieved (Fig. 6, right). A comparably lower Fig. 7 Hardness of hot extruded aluminum chips

123

Fig. 8 Grain distribution in the
middle of the extrudate of AW
7075 (left) and AW 2007 (right)
Fig. 9 Microstructure of the
hot backward extruded AW
7075 and AW2007 aluminum
chips
hardness can be explained by an increasing grain growth
due to higher forming temperatures (Fig. 8) [20]. In com-
parison to AW 7075 (ca. 57 lm), AW 2007 has a visible
finer grain size distribution (ca. 32 lm) after hot backward
extrusion. As a result the absolute reduction of the AW
2007 hardness is lower. The pictures of the microstructure
were taken from the middle of the extrudates, between
section c and d (Fig. 8).
Microstructural investigations of AW 7075 showed a
characteristic surface layer across the extrudate (Fig. 9).
Along the surface a 900 lm thick layer with a high con-
centration of undesirable alloying elements is visible. The
micro hardness of the deposit-layer is 190 HV 0.1/30 and
thereby 66 % higher than the ground-hardness. It might be
that the deposits near the surface are mainly AlMgZn2 as
also observed at direct-chill semicontinous casting of AW
123
Prod. Eng. Res. Devel.
7075 [21] as well as at cold compaction and subsequent hot
extrusion of premixed AW 7075 powder [22]. In [23] is
also described that finely dispersed Mg2Si and MgZn2
deposits can increases hardness, tensile strength and yield
strength owing to precipitation hardening. The surface
defect can be attributed to reheating of the shell during the
forming related to continuous wall friction and high
forming degrees in this section. In case of AW 2007 such
deposits along the surface have not been observed.
At the top of the extrudate a high amount of pores is
visible. The reason for the low local density at the top is the
formation of a process related dead metal zone. The
length of the zone is 1015 mm. AW 2007 shows clearly
higher porosities at top of the extrudate opposed to AW
7075. The high amount of copper may be responsible due
to the formation of hard intermetallic phases (Al2Cu).
Prod. Eng. Res. Devel.
Fig. 10 Tensile-stressstrain
diagram of the hot extruded AW
7075 (left) and AW 2007 chips
(right) in comparison to bulk
material (average of 3
measurements)
3.4 Tensile test
For comparing the mechanical properties, tensile test
samples (Fig. 4) were manufactured out of the extrudates
and compared with the corresponding bulk material. It was
observed that the ultimate elongation of the bulk AW 7075
is three times higher than of hot extruded chips (Fig. 10,
left). The hot extruded chips ruptured a brittle fracture
whereas the bulk material shows a shear fracture. This
behaviour can be explained by the resulting large grain size
of the extrudates (Fig. 8) and a higher amount of brittle
deposits from the chip surfaces. A major influence of the
heavy surface deposits of AW 7075, identified in Sect. 3.2,
can be excluded since the outer surface of the extrudates
was machined before by turning operation. The yield
strength of the hot extruded AW 7075 chips was nearly as
much as half of the bulk material. By comparison AW
2007 alloy shows a dissimilar behaviour which indicates
that the stressstrain intensity of forged chips depends
significantly on the used alloy and the present
microstructure (Fig. 10, right). The ultimate elongation of
the bulk AW 2007 is only two times higher and the yield
strength achieves 60 % of the bulk material.
4 Conclusions
This study provides a fundamental investigation on recy-
cling aluminum chips with a non-melting approach. By
using a hot backward extrusion process in a closed die, cold
pressed chips were hot extruded into a semi-finished
geometry. A turning process, which produces small chips,
let decrease the resulting bulk density and thus the die
filling for cold pressing is improved. Finally, a relative
density of 100 % in sections with high local forming
degree was achieved. For AW 7075, in some sections the
observed density is higher than of bulk material. It might
be due to higher amount of Al2O3 (density 3.95 g/cm3) on
chip surfaces and heavy formation of MgZn2 and Mg2Si
phases during heating and forming, as shown in [21, 23].
The highest accumulation of deposits was observed on the
surface layer of the extrudate (AW 7075). The deposit-
layer has a depth up to 900 lm and occurs in sections with
high forming degrees and temperatures. To avoid these
layers and prevent uncontrolled grain growth the forming
temperature should be well controlled.
Knowing the apparent drawbacks in comparison to
common continuous-extrusion processes, the mechanical
strength should be strongly improved. By means of better
controlled forming temperature grain growth will be
reduced. Furthermore, using multistage die forming can
improve the forming degree and thus the mechanical
properties of the recycled chips onwards. A subsequent
heat treatment after forging by quenching can further
improve the presented lean process chain. Thus, in future a
major rework by turning operation might be avoided by
manufacturing near net shape heat treated components
made of aluminum chips.
Acknowledgments The presented investigations with the title
Umformtechnische Wiederaufbereitung metallischer Spane durch
Sintern und Schmieden were carried out under the assistance of
German Research Foundation (DFG). This esteemed institution is
greatfully acknowledged.
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