Sealfast® Elastomers - Mechanical Research & Design, Inc.

SEALFAST® ELASTOMERS - MECHANICAL AND INFLATABLE SEALS

SEALFAST® Elastomers is Mechanical Research & Design, Inc.’s brand of engineered, shop and field tested, Inflatable and Mechanical Seals. SEALFAST® Inflatable and Mechanical Seals are at the heart of most of our products, from critical isolation pressure barriers to work positioning and lift tools, making us especially proud to offer them as standalone products to our customers. Nearly any shape, size, or form is within our capabilities. We work with low and high pressure applications — give us a call today to speak with one of our knowledgeable Elastomers Applications Engineers to choose the right seal for your job, the first time!

Mechanical Research & Design, Inc. leads the industry in engineered seals by designing and fabricating our elastomers with cutting-edge nonlinear software, utilizing time-tested and modernized vulcanization and molding tools. Our knowledge has been built through our long history, validating seals via mechanical testing as well as real-life rigorous application testing on our products, and providing continued service and support in the field. We carry many elastomers in stock so we can rapidly turn around products when needed for the most hazardous chemical, temperature, and even radioactive environments.

Unlike many other companies, we WANT you to work with our experienced Elastomers Engineers! We can walk you through how best to hold our seals in place and maximize seal life, working through your pressure, holding, fixturing, inflation medium, and other specific application requirements. If you require testing and validation of products, our machine shop supported “Lab” is constantly cycle, pressure, and functional testing our products. We strive to provide our customers with the most innovative and reliable sealing products. If you are seeking to fit and trial seals on your products, send them to us, we live our name, Research & Development, and assist many customers each day validating full product assemblies before they are needed in the shop or the field. See some of our extensive standard and customized solutions below!

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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ENGINEERED SEALS AND ELASTOMERS

Our SEALFAST® Elastomers can provide many options to economically simplify your product assemblies, optimize your in-house leak testing needs, or increase efficiencies in industrial processes. Some of the common options are listed below:

• We can vulcanize seals and associated connections to almost any shape or size imaginable. Our specialized tooling allows us to work with nearly infinite lengths building round, rectangular, oval, or other irregular shapes on demand.
• Mechanical Research & Design, Inc. stocks many elastomers in raw, sheet, block, and other easily processible forms to give our customers quick turnaround on many of our standard profiles. We can provide elastomers in EPDM, Buna-N, Silicone, Neoprene, Natural Rubber, SBR, and FKM, to name a few.
• Work with our Engineers to design fixtures and housings to operate our SEALFAST® Elastomers to low pressures, including vacuum, through ultra-high pressures, depending on your needs, size ranges, and functional requirements.

Our SEALFAST® Inflatable Seals can be found in many common applications, including:

• Door, Hatch, and Gate Seals
• Work Positioning – Part Lifting and Placement (For Manual and Automated Tools)

• General Work-Holding Tools and Fixtures
• Standard and Custom Leak Testing Tooling and Housings
• Yacht and Ship Seals
• Grout Packers and Fillers
• Pneumatic and Hydraulic Actuators in Assemblies or Power Systems
• As General Connectors Between Two Pipes or Ducts (Any Shape is Possible)
• Applications requiring adjustable holding or sealing pressure: if you change the inflation pressure, you change the contact pressure.
• Shaft Seals for Power Systems (Including for Mixers and Boats)

We also provide many common SEALFAST® Mechanical Seals to meet our client’s needs.

• A wide array of Industry Standard and Customized Flange and General Gasketing
• Standard and Large O-Rings (some sizes exceeding 8 inches in cross section)
• Custom Extrusions and Profiles
• Elastic Bands and Fillers from Sheet Stock
• J-Bulb Seals Common in Waterworks Isolation Construction Barriers
• Split Annular Seals

See below for other detailed applications for our SEALFAST® Elastomers

STANDARD SEALFAST® INFLATABLE SEALS AND ACTUATORS

Our SEALFAST® Inflatable Seals are the most flexible and reliable active sealing solutions in the market. We stock a wide variety of material in various sized cross-sections for ultra-short lead times, and our equipment is tailored to vulcanize seals to almost any size and shape.

Mechanical Research & Design, Inc. inflatable seals can be actuated using compressed gases such as air and nitrogen, as well as liquids, including water, hydraulic fluid, or even grout, to name a few. We manufacture seals for many industrial applications, such as: Leak Testing Seals; Isolation Tool and Barrier Seals; Gate, Hatch, Door Seals; Part Holding, Lifting, Placement Tool Seals; Robotic End Effector Attachments; Grout Packing Seals; and even as Pneumatic or Hydraulic Bladder Actuators in production processes and power systems.

SEALFAST® Inflatable Seals are often used to inflate outwards, inwards, or directly into a flat or complex face to grip, position, support, or seal against, as shown below. There are many different configurations and customizations that we can support, including tracking systems and inflation connections. Call one of our Elastomers Engineers today to walk through your application and begin your seal evaluation process!

INFLATABLE SEAL TRACKS

Mechanical Research & Design, Inc. specializes in general pressure boundary products, including: pipe plugs, bulkheads, doors, hatches, gates, large isolation barriers, work assist and leak test tooling, as well as general seal housings and connectors. MRD is the expert in track seals, seal mounting, seal housings, and seal retainers. We can design and fabricate a seal housing, track, or retainer, from simple tracking extrusion to elaborate machined housings to ensure you get the functionality and anticipated life out of our sealing products. When it comes to getting the most for your money for your turnkey sealing solution, come to the experts!

Our Elastomers Engineers design for maximum safety, quality, and life every day. Mechanical Research & Design, Inc. specializes in: Door and Hatch Seal Tracks; Yacht Seal Hatch Tracks; Industrial Automation Product Lifting and Placement Seal Housing Designs; Work Support and Positioning Sealing Systems; and Leak Testers of every imaginable Type. We can design tracking and housing systems to be bolt-on or weld into place from many materials, including: carbon and stainless steel, aluminum, brass and bronze; elastomer; and polymer. Some tracking systems are simple snap-in seal installation to bolt-on assemblies for rugged structural or pressure services.

INFLATABLE SEAL FITTINGS AND CONNECTIONS

SEALFAST® Inflatable Seals can be ordered with a nearly limitless number of seal inflation port interface options. We can design these pressure fittings to meet almost any industry plumbing connection, including: male and female NPT connections; compression lock fittings; tank or Schrader valve fittings; hose and barb fittings; push-in manifold fittings; other industry standard SAE, JIC, etc.; and even direct quick-connect fittings. These fittings can be made from nearly any material including brass, bronze, standard to stainless steels, other exotic metals, rubbers, and other polymers as well.

MECHANICAL SEALS

We form and vulcanize a wide selection of SEALFAST® Mechanical seals for both use on our own products as well as for direct sale to our customers in a multitude of different sizes, shapes, and materials. Our SEALFAST® Mechanical seals can be formed from stocked block, sheet, and other raw materials quickly to meet your specific application needs. Mechanical Research & Design, Inc. fabricates several well-known Mechanical Sealing products, including: O-rings up to and over 8″ in cross-sectional diameter; wedge profile seals; J-bulb seals; sheet gasketing; standard and custom flange gaskets; and many more gasket and sealing products. The SEALFAST® difference is we can have our Elastomers Engineers design the right fit, shape, and type for your pressure service needs! We can also utilize our full scale manufacturing production shop to build test fixtures and tooling so you know your product will work the first time and every time!

SEALFAST® CUSTOM-ENGINEERED SEALS

Mechanical Research & Design, Inc. has developed and manufactured a wide variety of SEALFAST® Custom Engineered Seals over the past few decades. We fabricate our own tooling in-house, which gives us the flexibility to design for specific applications and to optimize products for cost, function, and life through several iterations of testing. We specialize in modular seal assemblies that can be adapted to existing housings and tools, oftentimes by simply bolting our provided seal assembly into an existing assembly with standard fasteners and pressure fitting connections. SEALFAST® Molded and Cartridge seals are preferred by our customers to extend the ranges of isolation and test tool lines, by offering different size seals that mount to common shared tool bases, thus saving our customers money in these critical quality processes (i.e. – Leak Testing). We can typically design to most any pressure, material, size, or shape, and these products tend to be some of our most creative product solutions!

MECHANICAL RESEARCH & DESIGN, INC. SEALFAST® ELASTOMERS - ENGINEERED SOLUTIONS

As our name implies, Mechanical Research & Design, Inc., takes Research and Design seriously. Designs are developed and optimized continuously, products are cycle, fatigue, pressure, and strength tested in our “Lab” daily to ensure only the most reliable products make it into your applications. We use some of the most sophisticated non-linear elastomers softwares and couple them with our full scale production machine shop to provide the most practical “real-life” test scenarios, fixtures, tooling, and environments for our products. See the SEALFAST® difference! No task is too large or small — please give us a call today to speak with one of our Elastomers Applications Experts!

• Looking for complete turnkey Doors, Hatches, Gates, or Track Solutions… click here.

• Looking for Work Assist tooling, Lifting devices, or complete Packing and Filling Solutions… click here.

• Click here to see our full line of Isolation and Test Tools.

• Interested in standard and custom Leak Testers… click here.

• Click here to see our wide variety of General Seal Housings and Connectors.

• For Control Panels, Utilities, Turnkey Test and Operational Systems, please see our Controls and Accessories page.

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