When chemical companies invest in developing high-performance polymers—such as filled polyesters, PA, PC, LCP, and PEEK—to engineer automotive and electronic components, they could potentially experience issues with a high melting temperature during the injection molding phase. It’s crucial to understand that even if the mold filling has been successfully executed, the molded parts can still show significant failures, such as cracks or warps and aesthetic defects. Therefore, those parts need to be discarded as the products’ quality has been affected. These production complications create material waste, inefficient machine time, increased operator labor, and decreased profitability.

Different techniques, carried out with dedicated equipment and experienced personnel, can be used for high-performance polymers analysis. However, this requires a lot of effort and delivers results from various sources, which often can’t be combined. This complex scenario can be simplified by using a capillary rheometer.

R&D managers can test the materials before production with a capillary rheometer and simulate the material behavior under processing conditions. With the pvT accessory device, it is possible to estimate how the pressure and temperature affect the change in volume of polymers during the injection molding process.

The capillary rheometer equipped with the pvT device removes the production pains, making it possible for R&D to keep up with technological trends and the emerging high-performance polymer applications.