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Probably the most critical design feature of any seal design is the contact point or interface between the sealing lip and application shaft or housing if it's an external seal. Typically, the sealing lips are made of an elastomeric material such as NBR, Viton, PTFE, etc. Apart from the elastomeric lip material, a critical design feature of the seal lip is its geometry. Lip geometry is one of several factors that directly affect the radial load exerted on the shaft.

PTFE (Polytetrafluoroethylene) has become a commonly used material in sealing applications where other materials do not meet temperature, chemical compatibility, friction, or wear requirements. Many customers are unaware that "fillers" may be added to PTFE in order to enhance certain characteristics not found in virgin PTFE. Virgin PTFE possesses "creep" behavior that reduces effectiveness in mechanical applications.

If you're in the business of milling, grinding, drilling, plasma cutting, stamping, or any of the other various processes used to produce machined components, then you are all too familiar with burrs and the problems they cause. Burrs are a nuisance that draws close comparisons to the common cold. Just as there are many different ailments associated when diagnosing an individual with your "typical cold" there are multiple definitions that attempt to describe what constitutes a burr and the root cause of these deformations. One generally accepted description, provided by the Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME), defines a "burr" as a raised edge or small piece of material that remains attached to a workpiece after a modification process.

Whether you are shutting your machinery down to perform scheduled maintenance or to repair a failed internal component the most important factor to consider is how minimize the equipment's downtime. Colonial Seal Company realizes how costly repairs to your machinery are when you consider maintenance cost as well as lost production time and is here to help reduce that time and possibly eliminate it all together. Colonial Seal's Custom Seal capabilities allow us to provide our customers with unique sealing solutions designed to the customer's specifications typically within 5 business days.