this week's video is about a trip that Rod and i took to our supplier
Seal Jet just north of Brisbane, Seal Jet was established in Brisbane in October of 1995
and it was the first business in Queensland to manufacture custom seals for local
customers, this is Rod looking at rack upon rack of polyurethane material used to actually
machine custom seals, a lot of seals are actually manufactured from polyurethane
polyurethane is ideal for a few liquids for example mineral oil,methyl ethyl ketone, ozone
and even paraffin, it's also quite good for glycols sea water and water including water-glycol and
water oil emulsions. This is a picture of Johan our sales rep and Rod, in the background you can
actually see a polyurethane seal and it's approximately got an 800 millimeter diameter
so that's the capabilities that Seal Jet can actually, manufacture for us and other customers
This is another oil of POM also known as Acetyl or Delrin this product actually not used to make
seals but it's actually used to make bearings wear bands and hard-wearing support components
Its a good product again suitable for oil, methyl alcohol, methyl ketone mineral oil paraffin also petroleum
oil saltwater, soap solutions, steam, vegetable oils, water glycol, and water emulsions, also good
for gasoline and glycerin as well as some glycols so it's quite a versatile product. Another rack with
seal raw materials this one PTFE or Teflon or this chemical name Polytetrafluoroethylene
this is a very versatile material quite flexible good for just about anything ammonia, ammonia gas
benzene, brake fluid, kerosene, Petroleum again, steam toluene is also good for high temperatures
as well this is another product called PEEK P double E K or Polyether Ether Ketone this is really quite an expensive high-performance polymer it's good for bearings and pistons it's also good
as a biomaterial such as medical implants. Another very versatile seal raw material again available
in lots of different diameters and sizes is a Viton also known as FKM that's a fluorocarbon
again quite versatile almost as versatile as Teflon with the exception of some ammonia and
ammonia gases, not so good for brake clean or kerosene and also not that good at steam
but just about good for everything else it also has a very high temperature resistance
and a little more flexible than Teflon. Another quite versatile product and also quite temperature
resistant is EPDM or Ethylene Propylene this is quite good for ammonia and ammonia gases
and cold temperatures very resilient to brake fluid, gasoline, and glycerine, including kerosene
ozone, again good for saltwater, soap solutions, and sodium hydroxide, water-glycol, water and even
hot water emulsions, This shows another rack of various materials including some larger sizes of
Delrin and or EPDM. This is Rod next to one of the CNC machining centres as you can see it's actually
got some material mounted on the face plate ready to be machined this is the actual rotating tool
post with all these different tools on there some are a little specialist they use very high speeds
so one of the questions I asked is, how do you actually hold this material so that it doesn't
buckle or flex? like a normal piece of steel would, you know because you're machining flexible
products, this is the equipment they use just a normal Tec screw or wood screw and here it is
actually on the faceplate spaced out you've got the faceplate, you've got a hole through
the faceplate and then you've got the wood screw actually screwing into the actual material itself
obviously they use multiple screws to keep everything concentric it's as simple as that so a
very large red o-ring we saw before from PU here's some very very small backing rings they can machine
from the smallest diameter we've actually had seals made machined by a Seal Jet you
know down to a 5.5 millimetre inside diameter so plenty of capabilities there. This is some of the
tooling that they use some of the tooling they use is actually it's actually designed
for aluminium but they actually use it at elevated speeds for the different synthetic
materials here it is mounted in one of the tool holders on the rotating tool post also
distributes a series of seal removal and assembly tools this is a real special set of verniers
designed specifically for measuring hydraulic parts and seals, you can measure down inside
gland nuts you can measure the inside the depth of a groove of a gland nut also the height of
the groove at the gland nut this is specifically the end that actually measures the height of the
groove or how wide the groove is in the internal machine grooves are quite a versatile piece of
measuring equipment also available are combination kits of o-ring picks and it's also got some seal
installation tools and i think it is also a that's an o-ring cutter kit as well, this is the
other half of the o-ring and seal installation kit quite a lot of special bits and pieces in this kit
you