Method for Quality Control of Extruded Polymeric Material

Abstract

The present invention relates to a method for quality control of a polymeric material. In the quality control method of the present invention a polymeric source material is extruded in a processing unit comprising at least one screw, after which an imaging system records images of the extrudate. Based on the images, at least one macroscopic property, in particular at least one swelling derived macroscopic property, and optionally at least one non-swelling derived macroscopic property, of the extrudate is determined. The at least one determined macroscopic property of the extrudate is preferably compared to a database of predetermined swelling derived macroscopic properties of extrudates from polymeric source materials of known molecular composition to determine the quality of the extruded polymeric material. The invention also provides a computer-implemented method and a system for the conducting the quality control method. Further provided herein is a method for generating a database that links macroscopic properties of a solid polymeric source material to its molecular composition.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.