Why seals should nev­er be under­es­ti­mat­ed
in devel­op­ment — three typ­i­cal problems

As a rule, design teams focus on met­al com­po­nents first. Rub­ber and plas­tic parts do not get their atten­tion until the prod­uct is large­ly designed. How­ev­er, this means that seal­ing require­ments receive lit­tle atten­tion for a large part of the design process. This presents a chal­lenge for sup­pli­ers of rub­ber and plas­tic com­po­nents, who are asked to deliv­er seals that either can­not be man­u­fac­tured in the intend­ed form or can only be man­u­fac­tured at great finan­cial expense. Both sce­nar­ios have a neg­a­tive impact on dead­lines and cost tar­gets in the prod­uct devel­op­ment process.

The geo­met­ric design of the com­po­nent in which the seal is to be installed is a par­tic­u­lar source of dif­fi­cul­ty. Point­ed cor­ners and edges, com­pli­cat­ed angles and unusu­al shapes can only be sealed with great effort, if at all. The same applies to com­po­nents in which there are height dif­fer­ences. These make it dif­fi­cult to apply a seal even­ly because the mate­r­i­al mix­ture can­not be com­pressed even­ly dur­ing pro­duc­tion. Con­se­quent­ly, seal man­u­fac­tur­ers have to resort to com­plex, cost­ly man­u­fac­tur­ing process­es to meet their cus­tomers’ requirements.

If seals are con­sid­ered too late in the design process, this often pre­vents the use of cost-effec­tive solu­tions that are eas­i­er to imple­ment in terms of man­u­fac­tur­ing tech­nol­o­gy. Stan­dard seals (e.g. O‑rings), which could sim­ply be bought in with­out a ded­i­cat­ed mold con­cept, can­not be used in com­plex geome­tries, for exam­ple. Poten­tial sav­ings — not only mon­e­tary, but also in terms of the company’s car­bon foot­print (mate­r­i­al scrap, ener­gy use, etc.) — remain unused in this way.

It makes much more sense for design­ers to take into account the pre­req­ui­sites that must be met for a seal as ear­ly as the plan­ning stage. Their first approach should be to use stan­dard com­po­nents as often as pos­si­ble. If this is out of the ques­tion, design teams should seek con­tact with mate­r­i­al experts at an ear­ly stage. Their know-how makes it eas­i­er to devel­op the best solu­tion with a view to mon­e­tary spec­i­fi­ca­tions and man­u­fac­tur­ing imple­men­ta­tion options.