Seal Rounded Corners by Starting with These Three Measurements
Do you need to seal rounded corners against wind, water, dust, or dirt? Bulb trim seals are industrial rubber products that provide sealing and insulation for machine doors, vehicle hatches, and equipment enclosures. They’re designed to seal rounded corners and have separate bulb and retainer sections. Each of these sections can use a different material and have a different durometer or hardness.
With bulb trim, the bulb section compresses to form a seal when the door, hatch, or enclosure is closed. The trim or retainer section attaches to a flange or substrate. To choose bulb trim for your application, you need to specify the bulb size, bend radius, and flange thickness. By choosing the right bulb size, you can avoid over-compression. The right bend radius and flange thickness help to avoid kinking and leakage. (more…)
Cold bonding for finished gaskets joins cut lengths of rubber without the use of heat. This bonding technique isn’t performed under low-temperature conditions but is manual process that requires a brush and glue. By contrast, injection molding is a semi-automated process that uses a C-press machine with a heated barrel, metal plates, and tons of pressure. To join cut lengths, uncured rubber is used.
Hot splicing uses heat, pressure, and a film splice to join the ends of rubber profiles into bonded gaskets. This joining technique uses either a conventional heating source or infrared (IR) light and polyethylene (PE) film. Hot splicing creates strong bonds at the molecular level and generally provides better results than vulcanization, a bonding technique that uses uncured rubber instead of a film splice.
Rubber profiles come in lengths that are cut-to-size and fabricated into finished gaskets. Examples include picture frame or bezel gaskets, O-rings, and gaskets with rounded corners.
There are four common shapes for extruded rubber seals. Do you know which shape is the right choice for your gasket application? Engineers and seal designers can choose P-shapes, D-shapes, E-shapes, and lip seals. Purchasing agents can either order cut lengths or buy spliced gaskets.
What are the true costs of industrial rubber products such as seals, gaskets, and insulation? Buying rubber materials and fabricating them in-house may seem cost-effective, but is your company really saving money? For that matter, are you sacrificing quality, consistency, and potential sales opportunities for a questionable cost savings?
What’s the best way to cut industrial rubber products like seals, gaskets, and insulation? Manual cutting, die cutting, water jet cutting, and abrasive water jet cutting each offer advantages. They also meet different business and technical requirements. As this article from Elasto Proxy explains, choosing the right cutting method for your application requires a complete and careful analysis. 
When is nitrile rubber the right choice for sealing and insulation? This common elastomer is known by many names, including Buna-N, NBR, and acrylonitrile butadiene. There are plenty of trade names for nitrile, too. No matter what you call it, nitrile rubber offers good resistance to oils, fuels, and chemicals. Temperature and environmental conditions are limiting factors, however, and may require the selection of a more expensive material such as Viton™.
Nitrile rubber provides good-to-excellent resistance to many oils and solvents. Examples include:
Commercial grade rubber provides sealing and insulation for a wide variety of applications. Compounds such as commercial grade EPDM, silicone, and neoprene also cost less than specialty rubber materials that meet standards, approvals, or regulatory requirements from organizations such as ASTM International, Underwriters Laboratories (UL), and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
