Variations of temperature of acrylic bone cements prepared by hand and vacuum mixing during their polymerization.

The aim of this work was to investigate variations of temperature in acrylic bone cement SmartSet HV during its polymerization as the function of mixing technique (hand mixing and vacuum mixing) and sample thickness. The temperature of 25-mm diameter samples differing in their thickness was monitored using a parallel plate measuring system of the compact rheometer preheated to the body temperature. The curves representing the temperature measured and average values of times needed to obtain the peak temperatures of the test samples prepared by different techniques of mixing are presented and discussed. It was found that the maximum temperature and also the times of peak temperatures rose with sample thickness but at different rate for each technique of mixing.