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Seal Performance Creep

Something of a secret in the industry, Seal Performance Creep is an insidious problem that can derail your product’s performance without warning, and often in a way that takes you on a long and expensive journey to identify and fix. With shorter and shorter employment tenures a reliance on “tribal knowledge” carries heavy risk. As OEM’s outsource sub-assemblies or full assembly, whole supply chains can be replaced. New suppliers faced with generic specifications will supply generic components. Sometimes they work just fine. Sometimes they don't. A seal is inexpensive unless it fails.

We developed a set of tools you can use to prevent this from happening. Simple specs to drive sophisticated control processes. Each focus on one of these key aspects:

  • Verification of seal material - FTIR testing of each lot against baseline spectra (material’s unique “fingerprint”)
  • Dimensional Inspection process with tolerancing and AQL sampling appropriate to the criticality of your program
  • Workmanship inspection appropriate to the seal performance in your given hardware and use case.
  • Periodic Material Validation checks to assure that your critical material physical properties continue to meet original baseline performance. Tested in YOUR fluids or temperatures. So, the data is relevant to YOUR application.

Standard industry callouts for seal tolerancing, workmanship, and physical properties are typically built on specification platforms developed by committees serving early aerospace or automotive applications. The chemical compatibility of seal materials and fluids/media is often generic at best.

Our advanced specifications support is premised on the realization that our customers who are pushing limits on speed, temperatures, and bespoke fluids deserve performance specs tailored to their unique use applications.

Technician Monitoring Seal Performance Creep