A new instrument for statistical process control of thermoset molding

The recent development of a rugged ceramic mold mounted dielectric sensor and high speed dielectric instrumentation now enables monitoring and statistical process control of production molding over thousands of runs. In this work special instrumentation and software (ICAM-1000) was utilized that automatically extracts critical point during the molding process including flow point, viscosity minimum gel inflection, and reaction endpoint. In addition, other sensors were incorporated to measure temperature and pressure. The critical point as well as temperature and pressure were then recorded during normal production and then plotted in the form of statistical process control (SPC) charts. Experiments have been carried out in RIM, SMC, and RTM type molding operations. The influence of temperature, pressure chemistry, and other variables has been investigated. In this paper examples of both RIM and SMC are discussed