OEMs in various industries must protect crucial equipment with a sturdy, leak-proof seal. Rubber seals are essential for shielding critical equipment from heat, dust, water, and pressure. These seals must withstand different temperatures, pressures, and environmental conditions.
Device Technologies Inc. (DTi) provides a wide range of Commercial Off-the-shelf (COTS) seal profiles for most applications, ensuring optimal performance and durability. However, a customized seal solution is required for some applications, and DTi is equipped to offer this customization quickly and cost-effectively.
Commercial Off the Shelf (COTS) vs Custom Rubber Seals
DTi’s custom seals are meticulously engineered to fit your environmental challenges and any dimensional and material needs to provide a precise and reliable sealing solution for your vital equipment.
DTi offers the following two types of seal customization:
- Custom profile design seals
- One piece seals
Custom Profile Design Seals
Standard seals are offered in various materials, compression loads, and dimensions. However, readily available solutions may only partially meet your application's specific needs.
Conversely, a custom seal is tailored to fit your application's unique requirements and limitations, guaranteeing precise performance characteristics.
DTi utilizes in-house Collaborative Finite Element Analysis (CFEA) technology to carry out customization in a pre-production process. Through CFEA, DTi can rapidly model and evaluate a design digitally before production, reducing essential lead times and production costs.
This process considers all relevant material and environmental parameters that can impact sealing performance to assess the effectiveness of a proposed profile. These parameters include flame, smoke, toxicity (FST), heat, corrosion resistance, and water, UV, or oil resistance. DTi can design custom seals to meet a desired enclosure IP rating. Complying with equipment radii or meeting food/pharma grade requirements is also considered.
As an additional service, DTi can perform a Compression Load Deflection (CLD) test to ensure that the custom seal can maintain its elastic properties under prolonged compressive stress. DTi can produce a finalized product ready for shipment in as little as 7-10 weeks.
By embracing a custom design process that incorporates CFEA digital analysis pre-production, the seals are tailored to fulfill the precise performance requirements of the application, ultimately resulting in more effective and efficient sealing solutions.
One Piece Seals
Installing regular seals involves cutting them to the required length on site and fitting them onto the application. Depending on the application's requirements, the two ends can be left unbonded or bonded on-site.
DTi's one-piece seals are manufactured by bonding (vulcanizing) the ends of a COTS Seal-Fast EPDM or Silicone seal into a one-piece finished gasket. They are delivered to OEMs as a finished unit.
These one-piece seals are widely used to seal and safeguard doors, windows, or electronics from environmental elements such as water/moisture, dust, heat, cold, or gasses.
One-Piece Seals Offer Key Performance Benefits
Vilcanized one-piece seals are better than seals with unbonded terminal ends and offer various performance benefits, especially for OEMs. These benefits include improved efficiency, faster production, and reduced installation costs. Based on a $60 shop rate, DTi estimates that manufacturers can save 29.1% of the total installation costs when using a vulcanized seal.
Key Benefits
Key advantages of one-piece seals for OEMs include the following:
- Complete 360-degree protection as edges are sealed without terminating ends.
- 29.1% reduction in total installation costs at a $60 shop rate.
- Increased efficiency due to a quicker and easier application, with no need for secondary operations such as gluing or precision cuts.
- It can be designed to fit with a slight stretch to form a tighter seal without deformation.
- Lowers the Cost of Poor Quality (CoPQ) for OEMs- vulcanized seals have lower failure rates vs. seals bonded onsite.
- Minimizes workplace health and safety issues related to VOCs, glues, solvents, or Hazmat.
- Potential for increased use of automation/robotics in the assembly process.
Cost-Effective and Efficient Solutions
DTi's custom-designed seals are cost-effective because they more effectively prevent leaks, protect vital equipment, and minimize downtime. One-piece seals make production run more efficiently and at a lower cost, eliminating the need for non-standard operations like bonding the terminating ends.
Unparalleled Expertise, Support & Quality
DTi has a team of experienced professionals who understand your unique sealing requirements. From material selection to design customization, our experts work closely with you to develop the most effective sealing solutions for your applications.
DTi seals are made from high-quality materials, ensuring performance against wear, tear, and chemical exposure. With stringent quality control measures in place, we are confident that our seals will meet the industry standards your application needs, providing you with peace of mind.
If you want to learn more, please contact the person who contacted you.
To order free samples to see for yourself, click here.
