Seal Housings and Connectors
Mechanical Research & Design, Inc. is one of the leading designers and manufacturers of standard and custom Seal Housings and Pipe Connectors. We specialize in the design, fabrication, and testing of general Seal Housings, Pipe Unions and Connectors, Flange Adaptors, Dresser Sleeves and Couplings, and Spherical Joints. Nearly any size or shape, pressure or design code available. We have you covered. We vulcanize & mold our SEALFAST® Inflatable and Mechanical Seals in-house in the most common rubbers and utilize our production machine shop to get your products to you when you need them! Our SEALFAST® Seal Housings and Connectors can be found in Offshore Oil & Gas, refineries & transport pipelines, potable to untreated water systems, nuclear power plants, industrial fabrication facilities, and in Marine Construction the world over, to name a few.
We design Connectors and Seal Housings to mount anywhere! Our housings and connectors can mount to standard and custom flanges, seal to machined bolt patterns, or mount directly to pipes or ducts to allow you to fixture, support, pressure test, transport fluids, or control products during packaging applications. Our solutions range from streamlined economical solutions to robust heavy duty use for severe environmental conditions.
Throughout the years, we have seen nearly every problem encountered in infrastructure installation and repair. Our products have been field and shop tested for decades to prove them before installation into some of the most complicated infrastructure problems encountered. We engage with our customers to make the products they need and design solutions they can install and trust the first time, every time. We work daily with design, process, and bid preparation engineers as well as superintendents, site managers, underwater constructors and operators; contact one of our experienced product engineers or field technicians today and save time getting a solution you know you can trust!
Have Specific Requirements?
We specialize in custom solutions! Take a look at a few of our proven custom solutions or let us know your requirements. Our engineers and production staff are equipped to travel around the world at a moment’s notice to assist you with your needs!
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Contact us today to discuss our rates or to book an appointment with one of our engineers.
SEAL HOUSINGS
Mechanical Research & Design, Inc. designs and manufactures Seal Housings for a huge variety of different geometric and functional needs. In fact, Seal Housings are one of our most popular products due to the breadth of sizes, shapes, and pressures we are capable of working with. Our SEALFAST® Elastomers, as both Inflatable and Mechanical Seals or Packers can be employed in countless different ways in your application to reduce costs and process time. We vulcanize our seals in-house from a large variety of materials and cross-sections which allows us to design around your size, fit, environmental, and functional requirements with extremely short lead times.
With many of our designs, particularly SEALFAST® Inflatable Seal Housings, the interfacing components do not need to be concentric, level, or square – our systems can accommodate offsets and still seal for long life cycles at design-rated pressures. Many of our clients come to us because their existing housings are just not the right size, materials, or do not offer the life-expectancy they require out of a seal. Our engineers will evaluate your application for the right solution the first time, and will often cycle, function, and pressure test around your specific functional and environmental needs. If you are looking for quick-turnaround, reliable sealing systems, our SEALFAST® Seal Housings are the solution for you.
GENERAL STATIC SEAL HOUSINGS
Some of our common Standard Seal Housings can be seen above. We have many standard and custom housing options: we provide bolt-on, weld on, or lock-on style housings. Lock-on pressure and restraint-rated housings mount directly to plain end pipe. We can provide single seal and multi-seal options for redundancy and safety as required. MRD designs seals to wrap around (inward acting), inside of (outward acting), or bear against any surface (face sealing). We are the customization experts. If guidance systems are required for interfacing with our seal housing, we can provide rollers, bump guides, and more. We can seal around pipes, tubes, ducts, and irregular shapes from .25″ through 20 feet, and even larger. We also provide low profile sizes for hard-to-fit locations and robust, heavy industrial or offshore use designs, ranging from high vacuum pressures through 5000 PSI and greater. Mechanical Research & Design, Inc. has also provided turnkey systems of several housings for maximal range and adjustability. Some of our housings can be designed and certified to standard piping design codes upon request. SEALFAST® Seal Housings can be provided with either manual Mechanical Seals or Pneumatic or Hydraulically actuated inflatable seals. Call our experienced product engineers to assist in laying out your ideal solution and start saving money today.
Some Common Uses and Industries for our SEALFAST® Seal Housings are:
• Non-Axial Restraining Pipe Connectors
• Packing and Filling Solutions
• Quick Pipe Connections for In-Line Instrumentation (Flow-meters) Testing
• Telescoping or Adjustable Length Pipe Systems Connectors
• Adapters for Assembled or Modular Components
SLIP JOINTS AND DYNAMIC SEALS
Mechanical Research & Design, Inc. also provides both SEALFAST® Mechanical and Inflatable Dynamic Sealing Systems. Commonly known as Slip Joints, Slip Packers, Telescoping Seals, and Dynamic Seals, these products maintain a long-term pressure boundary against moving pipes and components. We fabricate dynamic sealing systems for nearly every size, shape, and cross-section, to allow maximum flexibility in systems where you require movement while maintaining pressure integrity. Our systems can be designed for low pressure fluid conveyance as well as high pressure and high temperature service. As with most of our other products, we can fabricate housings from nearly any metallic or polymer material to meet your specifications and we design with a wide variety of lubricants, some integral to the sealing surfaces for extended life use. Our housings can be designed to international piping and boiler standards to meet your specific piping system requirements.
Some Common Applications for our SEALFAST® Dynamic Seals:
• Process Piping Thermal Expansion Joints
• Offshore Oil & Gas Drill Through Equipment Conductor Lines and Conductor Unions
• Process Piping Connectors for Seismic Systems
• Adjustable Length Telescoping Pipe Systems
SHAFT SEALS
Our SEALFAST® Mechanical and Inflatable seals can also be used as rotary shaft back-up seals. Back-up shaft seals allow for the change-out of primary mechanical shaft seals and bearings when system shut down and evacuation is expensive or impossible! Mechanical Research & Design, Inc. also manufactures and tests complete turnkey shaft seal housings and adapter plates, to fit nearly any existing rotary system or harsh environment. We can manufacture housings and seals from a wide selection of materials, including exotic metals and elastomers from our wide inventory of elastomers.
Back-Up Shaft Seal Common Applications:
• Reactor Mixer Shaft Seals
• Food Industry Mixers
• Chemical and Petrochemical Mixers and Centrifuges
• Boat Shaft Seals
CONNECTORS
Mechanical Research & Design, Inc. offers a wide variety of fixed restraint and sealing Pipe Connectors, Dresser Sleeves, Flange Adaptors, and even Spherical Joint Connectors. We deal in pressure fittings and isolation components on a daily basis and have become well known for our oil & gas connectors, pipe connectors, and dresser sleeve components. At Mechanical Research & Design, Inc. we specialize in taking standard connector systems and making them better. Our Research & Design Lab is constantly validating and optimizing our sealing and restraining systems as we continually strive to provide the best products on the market. When our customers talk, we listen. We have connecters for potable water systems, compliant with NSF 61®, meeting ASME® and AWWA® codes and specification, some meeting API® drill through and well control requirements. Chances are, if you can find it on the shelf elsewhere, our products will last longer and work better — if you can’t find it on the shelf anywhere, we can likely design, fabricate, and test it faster than anyone, because it’s what we do!
GENERAL PIPE CONNECTORS
Mechanical Research & Design, Inc. provides a host of different connectors, utilizing our SEALFAST® Inflatable and Mechanical seals paired with our proprietary rigid, yet adjustable axial restraining systems. Though not limited to round piping systems, our products are used as general pipe unions, dresser sleeves and couplers, as well as telescoping, adjustable pipe connections. Our products can be used as temporary leak mitigation or functional pipe adaptors as well as for permanent, long-term, piping pressure fittings. Size nor pressure is typically a restriction as we vulcanize & mold our seals in-house and utilize our full-scale manufacturing machine and testing shop to work with any material the job calls for. We also provide connections for rectangular and irregularly shaped interfaces and even some split seal designs for existing infrastructure. Call us today to find out more!
Some Common Uses For Our SEALFAST® General and Union Connectors:
• Emergency Leak Repairs
• Dissimilar Metal Pipe Joint Connections
• Force Main Connections
• Easy to Adjust Telescoping Pipe Connectors
• Common Axially Restrained Or Unrestrained Dresser Sleeves and Couplers
FLANGE ADAPTERS
We manufacture standard pipe, duct, and custom flange-type adaptors and connectors. Mechanical Research & Design, Inc. specializes in flange connections that do not require welding, which can be mounted directly outside or inside of pipe ends that require full pressure and axial ratings. Our SEALFAST® Flange adaptors can be manufactured to mount to nearly any standard flange code and seal and mount to existing pipes using our SEALFAST® Inflatable and Mechanical seals and our proprietary restraint systems. Standard designs are sized to be economical for actual application pressures, however, we have designed tools to work with design pressures in excess of 5000 PSI. We have many materials and coatings to choose from and can design units in excess of 20′ diameter if needed; some designs can be split for shipping and installation.
SEALFAST® Flange Adaptors Typical Uses:
• Emergency Pipeline Intervention and Leak Repair – Quick Flange Connection
• Flange Connection Available When Hot Work (Weld Repair) Is Not Allowed
• Telescoping Flange Pipe Joint – Quickly Lengthen or Shorten Pipe Sections
• Dissimilar Pipe Metals Connection
• Quick Pressure Control For Piping System
SPHERICAL SWIVEL JOINTS
Mechanical Research & Design, Inc. offers a large product selection of fixed/locking and free floating Spherical Connectors. We design housings for locking dog-mount to plain end piping systems, weld-on connections, and flange bolt-on connections. In every connection, we utilize SEALFAST® Inflatable or Mechanical seals and packers to offer long-term, reliable leak-tight protection for low, medium, and high process pressures. Our products are used in applications requiring quick, cost effective piping system build-up and break down, requiring you to have minimal inventory to adjust for pipe length, pitch, and alignment. We are able to work with a wide variety of materials, coatings, and overlays to meet process piping codes upon request. Call us today to discuss your application and discover our alternatives to fixed rigid piping systems!
Some common applications for our SEALFAST® Spherical Joint Connectors:
• Fit and Assemble Process Pipelines Quickly
• Offshore Oil & Gas Flow Lines
• Offshore Oil & Gas Drill Through Conductor Joints for Floating Rigs
• Seismic Piping System Connectors
• Piping Systems Requiring Thermal Expansion
SPECIALIZED APPLICATION SEAL HOUSINGS AND CONNECTORS
In addition to our many standard seal housings and connectors, Mechanical Research & Design, Inc. has many specialized connectors and housings for specific industry applications. Over the years we have worked, hand-in-hand with our clients to develop some of the most innovative and practical solutions. Visit these pages below if you have a specialized Industrial, Oil & Gas, or Subsea need, or call us today and speak with an experienced design engineer to help guide you on your way to the right solution, the first time!
WORK ASSIST SEAL HOUSINGS
OIL & GAS SEAL HOUSINGS AND CONNECTORS
Mechanical Research & Design, Inc. engineers are the experts in offshore and land-based drilling, transport, and process piping solution connectors and seal housings. From telescoping flow lines to general overshot seal housings, packers, slip joints, and bell nipple seal housings, we have a product for every need.
SUBSEA CLAMPS AND CONNECTORS
ROV installation clamps and connectors are available for subsea piping systems and nozzles. Our tools are used for pipeline abandonment, process and transport pipeline repair, sea chest isolation, and more.
LEAK TESTERS
We have designed and fabricated many standard and custom shape and function leak tester seal housings over the years for applications ranging from general, progressive, and final assembly leak testing including: speaker housings, exhaust manifolds, appliance seal integrity, and more.
ANNULAR SEALING TOOLS
SEALFAST® ELASTOMERS
Integrate our SEALFAST® elastomers into your own connectors and seal housings. We design, mold, and vulcanize sealing products in-house which are available for direct purchase.
WHY MECHANICAL RESEARCH & DESIGN, INC. SEAL HOUSINGS AND CONNECTORS?
Mechanical Research & Design, Inc. is an innovative company that blends shop and field tested products, cutting-edge engineering, and a full scale machine fabrication shop in one site. This allows us to provide our customers with consistent, reliable solutions that constantly that are constantly improving. We are never satisfied with where we are today. MRD stands behind our products because we design them and test them in “The Lab” daily. We also have the added benefit of being able to fabricate seals in our own internal vulcanization and elastomers department, where we are constantly functional, performance, and mechanical testing our lines. We trust our seals. We use them all across our complete lines of Isolation and Test Tools, Work Assist Tools, Leak Testers, Connectors, and other critical safety applications that require enduring solutions. The products are further tested in real life application tests, allowing us to offer the best standard and customized solutions in the industry. Call us today and speak directly to one of our product engineers whose goal is to get you to the correct and most economical solution for your needs as quick as possible!
• For Control Panels, Utilities, Turnkey Test and Operational Systems, please see our Controls and Accessories page.