Picture this: You have an application using a standard O-Ring. The O-Ring seals great, but is wearing out very quickly, and friction is far exceeding the goals of the system.
You retrofit a fancy PTFE spring energized seal that costs 1000 times more than the O-Ring…only to find out it leaks!
Did you get a defective seal? Is the seal designer incompetent? Is the raw material bad?
Actually, everything about the design and manufacturing of the spring energized seal could be perfect, and you could still find yourself with leakage.
While blaming the seal might be your first instinct, the leakage in fact, could have nothing to do with the seal itself, and everything to do with the surface finish of the hardware it’s trying to seal against.
Spring Energized Seals are designed for applications with high pressures and temperatures, cryogenic fluids, extreme media and other service conditions which exceed the performance characteristics of O-rings and conventional elastomeric seals.
We introduced our Spring Energized Seal guide in 2016 are we're happy to share that it's now available for FREE to download.
When elastomeric seals fail
In this article, we’ll look at the fillers employed in PTFE resins.
In its virgin form, PTFE resin isn’t the best sealing material for dynamic shaft applications. Therefore, different fillers are added to achieve the desired results. The most common fillers are fiberglass, graphite, carbon, coke flour and molybdenum, although any filler can be added to virgin PTFE resin as long as the material can withstand maximum sintering temperature of 710-730 degrees F.
In order to develop lip seal products properly from PTFE resins, it is vital that the engineer understands the favorable and unfavorable characteristics of the resin.
Several characteristics and properties of PTFE resin must be considered to realize a reliable product. They are:
Bottling lines allow manufacturers to rapidly fill thousands of bottles perfectly making them a key element in food & beverage manufacturing facilities. While this equipment is incredibly efficient and has allowed manufacturers to greatly increase production, it offers some unique challenges for sealing solutions. Seals experience rapid and repetitive movements, challenging media, and are required to meet high purity standards often set by the FDA.
With these demanding applications and strict requirements, sealing manufacturers need a lot of expertise and specialized materials/ designs. Today we are going to highlight our Distributor Fredenberg-NOK Sealing Technologies and their brand of Freudenberg seals designed specifically for bottle filling and process industry applications.
When you're specifying a gasket for even the simplest application, it is important that the gasket supplier know all the operating parameters.
There are five major pieces of information needed to select the appropriate gasket, known by the acronym S.T.A.M.P.:
While gaskets are most often used in standard ANSI flange connections
The O-Ring gland (also known as O-Ring groove) is a very important design feature for anufacturing both efficient and cost-effective O-Rings.
The most important consideration for gland design is that it allows for proper and complete compression between the groove and the mating surface. While the shape of the O-Ring relies and depends on the application, shape is generally unimportant. The groove can be a variety of shapes; anything from triangular, rectangular, or dovetail.
Pumps that operate with a diaphragm have been in use since the mid-1800s because of their simplicity and effectiveness.
That isn’t to say these pumps have remained unchanged in all that time. More than 150 years of innovation and technical improvements in diaphragm profiles and elastomeric material sciences have secured their use for a wide range of pumping and reciprocating applications.
The design and utilization of diaphragms in pumping applications is a vast topic, yet it is one that Gallagher Fluid Seals’ application engineers have mastered by approaching the manufacturing and design of diaphragms with a step-by-step process.
The leading global copper producer has achieved exceptional results through the implementation of Vesconite Hilube wear-resistant bushings on load haul dump machines (LHDs).
Departing from traditional bronze bushings, the mining company’s adoption of Vesconite Hilube on Sandvik and Caterpillar LHD booms has led to an unprecedented increase in bushing lifespan, exceeding their initial expectations.
Previously, the company relied on bronze bushings and had a mere 1.5 months of operational life. Vesconite Hilube bushings were introduced in December 2022, with an initial goal of extending bushing life to three months.
The remarkable reality, however, has far surpassed this objective, as the Vesconite Hilube bushings have endured for an impressive nine months and counting.
This transformation has been particularly significant, with the Vesconite Hilube bushings fitted to 30 LHD booms in 2023, and only one instance of a boom
World leading manufacturer of level measurement technology. Their key product lines support RF admittance level instrumentation as well as ultrasonic, hydrostatic, radar, and magnetostrictive instrumentation
Gallagher’s customer required a custom-sized grommet made from Kalrez® perfluoroelastomer material, but had specific cold temperature requirements
The customer worked with Gallagher on a variety of seal applications in years past with great success, requiring both design and engineering expertise