Mystery failure mode derails product launch.

The Situation

A new-to-market premium performance bicycle component was seeing moisture ingress under tournament racing conditions, causing malfunction of critical control electronics. Our customer needed a fix quickly to restore the confidence of race teams – essential for marketing the component to a wider customer base.

The Ask

• Close engagement with our Applications Engineering team to review the incumbent seal design.
• Consult with the customer’s design engineering team to help recreate moisture ingress in the lab.
• Propose seal modification utilizing existing gland design.

The Solution

Intensive engagement & consultation with customer’s team revealed vibrational harmonics were root cause. Material physical properties and deflection characteristics were modified to accommodate vibration effects.

Darcoid’s Performance Creep controls adopted, assuring predictable seal performance regardless of influences inside and outside the supply chain

The Success

• Running change in seal design allowed an immediate fix.
• Race team confidence restored.
• Mass market product release timeline maintained.