The O-Ring & Engineered Seals Division is now offering a rapid prototype program for solid and hollow spliced O-rings that will reduce lead times on small orders to improve sample and trial testing on enclosure projects. The program provides spliced rings available in a variety of cross sections and can be purchased in either solid or hollow profiles.
In the event that enclosure tolerances are large or the available compressive force is low, Parker engineers can design a custom hollow seal to help absorb large tolerances while providing very low compressive force compared to solid cord. Spliced rings with large inside diameters up to 95” are available in silicone and nitrile materials. Rings with inside diameters up to 57” are available in fluorocarbon. Cross sections of .070”, .103”, .139”, .210” .250” are regularly stocked and available to splice to the ring ID needed. The chart below outlines the current compounds, cross sections, and diameters available under the program.
Speed wins
A short, two-week delivery time provides accelerated design validation prior to production launch. On large projects where customers require confirmation that the ring ID will properly fit the application and provide the needed compression force, the Rapid Prototype Program can reduce the overall lead time – increasing the chance of success. To learn more about this new program, contact your local Parker distributor.
What is extruded and spliced?Parker utilizes a hot vulcanizing bonding process to splice our rings. Our bonding material is the same base polymer as the extrusion, giving it equal chemical resistance and physical properties of the seal.
Precision extruded and spliced products offer cost effective sealing solutions for many applications. These include low closure force seals, large diameter seals that cannot be molded, or requirements for hollow O-rings, non-standard O-rings and other extruded profiles with an inside diameter larger than 2.500 inches.
Spliced and fabricated seals offer the designer a tremendous amount of flexibility for challenging applications. Products can be vulcanized from a variety of solid and hollow cross-sections. Due to the low tooling cost and flexibility of the extrusion process, customer profiles can easily be designed to specific application needs.
Extruded and spliced products are available in the following material types: silicone, nitrile (Buna-N), EPDM/EPR, HNBR, fluorosilicone, fluorocarbon, and FFKM. Specialty approved materials are also available that are certified to UL (UL 94 V-0 and UL 157), USP Class VI and FDA white listed materials.
Advantages of Parker’s extruded and spliced product:Precision extrusion tolerances
Exclusive use of quality sealing grade materials
Superior hot vulcanization capability (High bond integrity)
Low closure force sealing solutions
Ease of adjusting closure force by adjustment of cross section design, cross section I.D., or durometer
Hollow cross sections are excellent replacements for foam or sponge gaskets, offering superior compression set resistance.
Interference -fit designs available for ease of installation without use of adhesive
Pressure Sensitive Adhesive (PSA) backed extrusions available for flat panel sealing applications.
Low cost option for static face or radial seal O-rings over 2.500" I.D.
Can be used in standard or non-standard grooves
For more information on the benefits of hollow and solid spliced seals, visit Parker's website and chat with an engineer today!
This article was contributed by Wesley Burcham, market manager, Parker O-Ring & Engineered Seals Division.
Additional Resources
Sealing Groove-less Applications with Flat Panel Gaskets
Sealing Fundamentals | How to Properly Install a Parker Hollow O-ring
Sealing for Harsh Environmental Conditions in Telecommunications Applications
Environmental Seal Enclosure 101
Categories
Parker Chomerics 
The Notes section makes it possible for users to add their own comments and remarks to the calculation. Following the O-Ring selection process, the data obtained can be converted into a PDF document and exported.
A common challenge in the automotive industry is to seal a wide variety of fluids that are being utilized in a host of unique applications. Whether it be due to dynamic motion, component geometry, or a combination of the two, there are many times when an O-ring is not ideal for a part’s sealing needs. When millions of people trust automotive manufacturers with their lives each day, “non-ideal” simply won’t do. Fortunately, Parker has utilized our precision cut and extruded product line to efficiently manufacture solutions to common problems that arise in the automotive industry.
A quick look under the hood is all it takes to notice that there are many caps, nozzles, and covers that contain a wide variety of fluids. Antifreeze, coolant, and oil are the traditional fluids found in an engine, but even on the modern-day hybrid or electric vehicle, there are still many components that are covered and need sealing. Parker’s extrusion and splicing manufacturing process allows us to design seals for a wide range of challenges. Our 
We receive many requests from customers asking for recommendations on how to retain seals in an application. One of the most popular "quick fixes" is to apply liberal amounts of adhesive to a standard O-ring type product without respect to groove shape or sealing function. However, Parker OES provides a wide array of sealing technologies, offering innovative solutions to accommodate the challenging and vast sealing needs of our customers.
Precision timepieces operate much like the inner workings for automotive machines. Underneath the back cover lies a series of gears and springs designed to measure the passage of time. We are told how these inner workings are created with such precision that they are able to measure the time accurately over whatever time period that the name brand manufacturer wants to advertise. 
It is important to note that the vehicles are not becoming any smaller. If anything, the trend is for smaller vehicles for better fuel economy. Obviously, a ten speed transmission had many more components than that of a four or six speed, but all of these parts need to fit within the same size transmission case. 
Two things are equally important for reliable performance of an O-ring seal: the right size and the right material. Parker’s new O-Ring Selector is an engineering design tool that enables users to make the right material and size selections easily, quickly and reliably – in a single application. This post explains how to select a material using the “Service Conditions & Material Selector.”
Selecting the right material for a specific application is a central step in assuring the functionality of an O-ring in the system to be sealed. The “Service Conditions & Material Selector” is focused on mapping the material-related application conditions.
Our applications engineering team takes more than a few calls each month where the O-ring is leaking, either immediately or after just a short time in service. Once we drill down to the details, we learn the failure mode is an improperly sized groove and O-ring. It isn’t all that uncommon for a groove to be cut in a flange and a novice designer learns the hard way that standard O-rings cannot fit in just any groove geometry. For hardware that has already been machined, frustration ensues as the caller learns the O-ring solution requires tooling. Tooling can have a lead time of at least a month to cut and can cost thousands of dollars. Parker offers a TetraSeal® solution, which often does not require tooling and can be made of many of the same materials used for O-rings.
a cut and a width. However this methodology is used to achieve other seal profiles as well. The flexibility on sizing of precision cut seals allow us to change the square to a rectangle, or other configuration, as an alternate seal solution if it better suits the preexisting groove. This customization can be a great alternative for unconventional groove profiles where an O-ring simply will not work. One common example of an unsuitable groove geometry is having the width too narrow for the depth. Using a seal with a round or square cross section means choosing proper seal compression at the risk of overfilling the groove or, selecting a smaller cross section for proper volume fill but sacrificing with too low compression. Both of these options can result in leaking or shortened seal life.
Customers often call with various sealing challenges. But sometimes their dilemmas can be solved with more robust solutions instead of direct replacements. For example, when a customer is having issues with a PSA-backed hollow seal that keeps peeling away from the bottom surface. 
Two things are equally important for reliable performance of an O-ring seal: the right size and the right material. Parker’s new O-Ring Selector is an engineering design tool that enables users to make the right material and size selections easily, quickly and reliably – in a single application. This post explains how to design the sealing system using the “Size Selector.”
Users can enter their own comments on the calculations made in “Notes.” After the review of the sealing system has been completed, the data obtained can be converted into a PDF.
Präzisions-O-Ringe werden durch Vulkanisation in einem geschlossenen Werkzeug im Kompressions- oder Spritzverfahren hergestellt. Auf diese Weise lassen sich O-Ringe in relativ engen Fertigungstoleranzen und mit guter Oberflächenbeschaffenheit gemäß ISO 3601-1 und ISO 3601-3, herstellen. Aufgrund festgelegter Vulkanisationsparameter weisen Präzisions-O-Ringe gleichbleibend hohe mechanische Eigenschaften über den gesamten Umfang auf. Nur durch dieses hohe Qualitätsniveau können später in der Anwendung gleichbleibend gute Dichtungseigenschaften über einen langen Zeitraum hinweg erreicht werden.
Die Aufgabe >> Bei der großindustriellen Herstellung halbsynthetischer Antibiotika werden bis zu 500.000 Liter Antibiotika pro Fertigungslos produziert. Damit dies wirtschaftlich möglich ist, werden Anlagen entsprechender Größe benötigt. Neben großen Fermentern mit mehreren Metern Durchmesser, in denen biotechnologisch Antibiotika gezüchtet werden, kommen auch Zentrifugen mit vergleichbaren Abmessungen zum Einsatz, um das Antiobiotikum von den Prozesshilfsstoffen zu trennen. Hierbei darf es sowohl aus Sicherheits- als auch aus wirtschaftlichen Gründen auf keinen Fall zu Leckage kommen. Eine Leckage an den Zentrifugen könnte zu einer Kontamination der Antibiotika, verbunden mit einem entsprechenden hohen wirtschaftlichen Schaden, oder schlimmer, Kontamination der Umgebung mit der damit verbundenenen Gefahr für Mensch und Umwelt führen.
Die Aufgabe >> Bei der Neuentwicklung einer Lithografieanlage für die Halbleiterfertigung bestand die Aufgabe in der Abdichtung zweier Gehäusehälften. Aufgrund der Toleranzsituation bei der Fertigung der jeweiligen Gehäusehälften konnte bei montiertem Gehäuse ein Spalt von bis zu 0,5 mm zwischen den beiden Gehäusenhälften auftreten.
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Frequently, our team in Applications Engineering receives a question along these lines: “Is your compound E0740 peroxide cured?” Usually, these questions are asked because an end customer specifies cure system as a requirement on the drawing for the part. Parker considers the ingredients used in our manufacturing process as a trade secret and are not at liberty to directly disclose what cure system is used for any given compound. However, there is a valid and scientific basis behind why customers are concerned with the cure systems of the O-ring material, but is it as critical as it seems?
Depending on the base polymer, there are different options for what cure system can be used during manufacturing. In general, each polymer family has at least two options for cure, each providing a different set of finished material properties. In addition to final material properties, cure systems can also differ in cost, with the costlier cure system typically resulting in a more desirable set of final properties for seal applications. Often when customers are specifying a cure system, their intended end-result is to obtain a material with a particular set of properties. A common example of this was laid out above, when a customer may ask whether “E0740 is peroxide cured.” In practicality, what they likely want to know is “Does E0740 have a high resistance to compression set, high tensile strength, and better-than-average high temperature resistance?” These are the properties that result from an EPDM material being peroxide cured. If, in some crazy advancement of science, we discovered that barbecue sauce provided EPDMs with material properties superior to that of peroxide while being less expensive, specifying a “peroxide cure” would no longer be beneficial, as the finished material properties of a peroxide-cured-compound would be inferior and more expensive than those obtained through barbecue-sauce-curing. While that is certainly a silly example, one day in the future, a new technology will be developed and rubber materials will be cured with different substances than what is currently considered to be “mainstream” technology.
When someone asks about the cure systems of a compound, our protocol is to understand more about the customer’s application. Each option for cure system of a rubber family has its advantages and disadvantages. Understanding each customer’s specific application tells us what properties are going to be critical in the material selected for their application. For nitrile compounds, many customers prefer peroxide curing, which typically provides increased compression set resistance, higher temperature performance, higher ultimate tensile strength, and increased chemical resistance. However, there are other customers who, maybe in the case of dynamic sealing, would prefer sulfur cure, which would provide better wear resistance, is more cost effective, provides higher ultimate elongation, and improves the ability to withstand repetitive bending. When it comes to sealing, it’s not always about how you got there, but whether or not you get the right material that gets the job done! 
The utilization of suitable materials based on specialized engineering and manufacturing know-how makes it possible to integrate several parts and/or functions in a single assembly component. In many cases, this can shorten the process chain and reduce logistics and assembly requirements. In the case of hygienically sensitive applications such as those in the food industry, a reduction of the number of components enhances hygiene and ease of use, as the number of interfaces and joints decreases as well. As a result, the need for long and costly cleaning cycles is eliminated and the frequently necessary partial dismantling of equipment for maintenance and cleaning can be accomplished with much greater ease and in less time.
The solution
Electric vehicles are developing fast in line with growing demand. However, only by selecting proven, reliable, high-quality products for the effective thermal management and EMI shielding of batteries, is it possible to maximize performance.
