The term “plastics” is generic way of describing a synthetic material made from a wide range of organic polymers. Organic polymers describes a man-made substance that is formulated using polymer chains to create what we commonly refer to as…(you guessed it), plastics.
Before plastic, leather had been used to create Backup ring devices behind O-rings. Leather allows fluids to be retained, providing lubrication for the O-ring when the system was running dry.
The problem with leather was that it could become dry and shrink away from the sealing service, exposing the elastomer to same pressure it was intended to protect against.
With the advent of polymers, a piece of plastic could be cut or formed into the exact shape to allow for zero extrusion gap, and for continued protection for the O-ring.
Some polymers were very brittle. Since they needed to be deformed to allow for installation into solid glands, the cut of the plastic could nibble at the O-ring, causing premature failure of the element it was supposed to be protecting.
When PTFE moved out of the lab and into industrial use, it quickly found itself adjacent to the O-ring. PTFE offers extrusion resistance and, at the same time, doesn’t erode or nibble at the O-ring due to the “softness” of the polymer.(Hardness between 55 and 65 Shore D)
Given the composition of PTFE, or Teflon, it could be utilized as a sealing element to protect Backup rings and conform to the shaft. The bonus was it was generally easy on shafts (depending on the filler added to the PTFE).
There are some negative aspects to Teflon that needed to be overcome by early engineers. First, it has a fairly high rate of Thermal expansion which, by its own nature, could often times lose contact with the sealing surface. This meant some kind of loading was necessary to ensure contact.
PTFE is as tough as other polymers, so the fact that it could seal on a shaft made it vulnerable during installation for tears or nicks on sealing surface.
Second, if it were stretched during installation, the material had to be sized back to its original shape due to its poor elastic properties.
Better known as Teflon in the industry, Polytetrafluoroethylene is widely used in practically every industry on and off the planet (and even beneath its surface!)
This material’s primary claim to fame is its resistance to most chemicals. It inherently has an extremely low coefficient of friction, it’s easily machined from rods, tubes, or compression-molded shapes.
It’s one of the few polymers that are approved for medical implants due to its inertness to bodily fluids — the immune system principally ignores its presence in the body.
Moving away from the body, you’ll find PTFE or Teflon products in medical
Polymer wear rings were developed to offer an alternative to dissimilar metal wear rings.
One of the advantages to using a polymer material such as nylon or filled-Teflon instead of a metallic bearing . Whereas when you use bronze or metallic bushings, these materials are prone to point loading on the edges of the bearing.
This property of polymer bearings combined with solid lubricants can yield a product that is much less likely to damage moving components.
When it comes to designing and developing seals, the aerospace and industrial industries need a basis to allow production anywhere in the world.
One of the first PTFE (Teflon) standards, AMS3678, describes Teflon and the addition of fillers. This was used in conjunction with Mil-R-8791, which is one of the Mil specs describing a backup ring device.
The origin of all these specs dates back to the creation of the O-ring.
In 1939, Niels A. Christensen was granted a U.S. Patent for “new and useful improvements in packings and the like for power cylinders.” These referred to improved packing rings made of “solid rubber or rubber composition very dense and yet possessive of great liveliness and compressibility.” These products were suitable for use as packings for fluid medium pistons (liquid or air). The improved packing ring is the modern O-ring.
There was a progression of standards for the O-rings created by individual countries, such as AS568, BS 1806, DIN 3771, JIS B2401, NF T47-501, and SMS 1586. Eventually, AS568 became more accepted in the industry.
The backup ring was originally created to help improve the O-ring’s ability to resist extrusion. Teflon was widely used as one of the materials for backup ring devices. Standards were created to unify the production of this Teflon device.
The progression of standard changes has led to AMS3678/1 for Virgin PTFE through AMS3678/16. These standards describe a group of Virgin- and filled-PTFE materials accepted by the industry for manufacturing seals and back-up ring devices.
Mil-R-8791 was canceled in February 1982. This spec was superseded with AS8791, which eventually evolved into AMS3678.
AMS3678 is a tool used by customers and Teflon suppliers to create uniformity in the manufacturing and processing of seal and bearing materials. The standard is inclusive of most of the compounds upon which the industry was built.
When customers approach with an old “mil spec”, they are pushed to the new AMS spec which is currently active. Eclipse manufactures to the spec so their customers will have the confidence that they manufacture to a known standard.
When crossing custom materials from well-known sources, customers are driven to an accepted spec that is equivalent to the original source of the material. This helps customers sell their products with internationally-known materials rather than custom, home-grown compounds that are often intended to single source those materials.
There are several qualifications of the spec that suppliers must observe. This includes dimensional stability tests. This test ensures the material has been properly annealed, and that the seal or backup ring will fit and function as it was originally intended.
Eclipse is uniquely qualified to supply parts to the latest AMS3678 specification. They understand the scope of the specification which allows us to ship parts with fully traceable certification.
AMS3678 helps validate a material to a customer to ensure they get the same material processed the same way with each order. Beyond this, there are other ways to determine what makes a part process-capable.
FFKMs, also known as perfluoroelastomers, were first developed in the 1960s for applications involving high temperatures and/or aggressive chemicals. Perfluoroelastomers exhibit many properties similar to PTFE (polytetrafluoroethlyene, or Teflon®), and are considered inert in almost all solvents. However, PTFE is a plastic, and when compressed, it will not recover to its original shape. On the other hand, elastomers contain crosslinks, which act as springs to give the material resiliency and the ability to recover after a part has been compressed - this resistance to permanent compression gives the material the ability to maintain a seal over time. (To learn more about perfluoroelastomers, download our Introduction to Perfluoroelastomers White Paper).
The article below was recently published on FlowControlNetwork.com, and discusses how FFKMs are being used in oil & gas exploration, as production companies are increasingly operating in high-pressure, high-temperature (HPHT) downhole conditions.
Improving technologies and methods to increase the recovery of oil from existing reservoirs is a global challenge. In the U.S., oil production at reservoirs can include three phases: primary, secondary and tertiary (or enhanced) recovery. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) estimates that primary recovery methods — which rely on the natural pressure of the reservoir or gravity to drive oil into the wellbore, combined with pumps to bring the oil to the surface — typically tap only 10 percent of a reservoir’s oil. Furthermore, secondary efforts to extend a field’s productive life — generally by injecting water or gas to displace oil and drive it to a production wellbore — still only push recovery totals to between 20 and 40 percent of the original oil in place. Clearly, much untapped oil and gas remains in existing wells.
Polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) is commonly known as a coating for pans under the DuPont trade name Teflon™. It is also superbly suited as a sealant and is superior to many materials in specific ways. For example, it can be used at low and high temperatures and in combination with gasoline, solvents, water and other polar media such as lyes, standard lubricants and brake fluid. PTFE’s chemical resistance is nearly universal.
In 1938, while working for DuPont, American chemist Roy Plunkett was looking for a substitute for the fluorohydrocarbon Freon, which his employer was only allowed to sell to General Motors’ Frigidaire division for patent-related reasons. For his research, he had obtained a supply of tetrafluoroethylene (TFE), which was used as refrigerator coolant. He stored it in small pressurized gas cylinders at low temperatures. When he was ready to use the gas after a fairly long storage period, none was left in the container. But its weight was unchanged. After it was opened, there were white crumbs inside and the inner walls of the container were covered with a thin layer. Plunkett quickly realized that the TFE gas had been polymerized into a plastic. This new plastic, PTFE, proved to be completely resistant to chemical exposure. Not even aqua regia¹ could harm it in any way. But its production was so costly that practical uses seemed inconceivable.