NSPM 2006 VIth National Symposium on Polymeric Materials 2006 13-14 December 2006, Subang Jaya, Malaysia THE MECHANICAL PROPERTIES OF NYLON 6 (PA6)/ACRYLONITRILE- BUTADIENE-STYRENE (ABS) BLENDS Agus Arsad, Azman Hassan, Mohd Nizam Mohd Idris, Abd Razak Rahmat Department of Polymer Engineering, Faculty of Chemical and Natural Resources Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 81300 Skudai, Johor ABSTRACT Blending is a combination of two or more polymer to produce a new polymer which has good mechanical properties at low cost. Nylon 6 and ABS both have their specialty and weakness but on the other hand, with the combination of Nylon/ABS, it helps to patch both weaknesses. For this study, high impact ABS was used to blend with PA 6 to improve the mechanical properties and to reduce the cost. The main purpose of this study was to investigate the ratio of PA 6/ABS blends to produce a good combination of mechanical properties such as tensile, flexural and impact properties. Besides, the study was also investigate the compatibility of PA 6/ABS and to examine the structure morphology of its blends. For sample preparation, the pellets of PA 6 and ABS were extruded at the different composition using twin screw extruder and then being moulded using injection moulding machine. In this study, the tests conducted were tensile test, flexural test, Izod impact test and morphology examination of PA 6/ABS blends. With the increasing of ABS content in PA 6/ABS blend, the tensile strength, tensile modulus and elongation at break were decreased. Besides, the flexural strength and flexural modulus of the blend were also decreased. However, the addition of ABS increased the Izod impact strength of the blend. The best ratio for the PA 6/ABS blends based on the mechanical properties is 60:40 PA 6/ABS. Keywords PA 6, ABS, polymer blends, mechanical properties INTRODUCTION Nowadays, most of the daily requirements are made from plastic such as table, chair, toy and others. Not only at home, plastics used are general. The ever- increasing use of plastics in civilized society is now recognized as a significant contributory factor to an increased standard of living. Plastics are used for almost everything from the articles of daily use to the components of complicated engineering structures and heavy industrial applications. With the growing of the demand of plastic materials, engineering plastics has been introduced. However, engineering plastics like Nylon 6 (PA6), have relatively poor fracture toughness levels when compared to another classes of materials like metals and ceramic [1]. Here, the toughening mechanism is believed to improved the fracture toughness as well as increases the capacity to absorb energy before rupture [2]. PA6 is in a major class of engineering plastics [3,4]. as it possesses good balances of several properties-good chemical resistance, good wear and abrasion resistance, and good mechanical and thermal properties [5]. PA6, however, has some drawbacks associated with its processing instability high mold shrinkage and dimensional instability-due to its inherent properties of rapid crystallization and high 1