tetraseals

Article re-posted with permission from Parker Hannifin Sealing & Shielding Team.
Original content can be found on Parker’s Blog.

TetraSeal: An Alternate Sealing Solution When an O-Ring Isn't Working

Our applications engineering team takes more than a few calls each month where the O-ring is leaking, either immediately or after just a short time in service. Once we drill down to the details, we learn the failure mode is an improperly sized groove and O-ring. It isn’t all that uncommon for a groove to be cut in a flange and a novice designer learns the hard way that standard O-rings cannot fit in just any groove geometry. For hardware that has already been machined, frustration ensues as the caller learns the O-ring solution requires tooling. Tooling can have a lead time of at least a month to cut and can cost thousands of dollars. Parker offers a TetraSeal® solution, which often does not require tooling and can be made of many of the same materials used for O-rings.

Benefits of TetraSeals

The TetraSeal is a circular precision-cut seal with a square cross-section. Unlike O-rings which require a unique mold for each material family and size, TetraSeals are extruded, cured and machine cut to the target thickness. Our manufacturing facilities in both Spartanburg, South Carolina and Goshen, Indiana are tooled in a variety of interchangeable extrusion dies, making this type of seal an easily sourced seal solution without the lead time and cost of a custom molded O-ring.