A New Approach to Capillary Viscometry of Thermoset Transfer Molding Compounds

A new capillary rheometer incorporated in an instrumented transfer molding press has been developed. This rheometer is effective for determining the viscosity characteristics of thermoset molding compounds under both isothermal and typical molding conditions. In examples of the rheometer's utility, the power law indices of two commercial epoxy molding compounds have been determined to be approximately 0.7. Additionally it has been shown that preconditioning typical epoxy compounds at 47 percent relative humidity causes a viscosity decrease of about 40 percent owing to plasticization of the epoxy resin.