Processing thermosetting materials

Thermoset materials come from production plants, or after intermediate processing, in a wide variety of forms: liquids, pastes, mastics, solid resins, often powdery, fusible and soluble in solvents. Processing methods take full advantage of the physical form of the transformed product, or modify it to optimize transformation conditions.

Heat and/or catalysts or hardeners are used to create new associations between short molecules. This chemical transformation is irreversible; the new bonds are covalent, and very high energies are required to destroy them.

In the course of processing, the base products that were liquid become solid, and the solid resins that were fusible and soluble become infusible and insoluble.