Adding value to product development has been part of the DP Seals difference for over 40 years. This is a key reason engineers from diverse industries across the globe continually partner with us to solve challenges requiring custom rubber seal, gasket and moulding expertise.
Over this time we have focused on doing our utmost to provide additional value to our customer’s projects. We like to call this our ‘Unseen Advantage’.
We understand that the product development process is iterative and not always followed step by step. In fact, many of our customers already know what they want, and come to us at the point of choosing a manufacturer.
However, below you’ll find guidance and content to help you at each product design stage.
1. Defining the problem
An extremely versatile material, rubber is an ideal solution for many applications. DP Seals is at the forefront of material development and can help with the most difficult challenges in the following areas:
- Reducing noise
- Reducing vibration
- Reducing friction
- Preventing ingress
- Shielding against electro-magnetic interference (EMI)
- Managing insulation
- Managing conduction
- Strengthening parts
- Reducing assembly time of complex parts
Our ‘Unseen Advantage’:
In addition to helping you solve the challenges outlined above, experience demonstrates we add extra value at this stage through:
- Helping you select the right base material
- Innovative part geometry solutions
- Pushing the boundaries in tolerances, quality and micro detail
Useful content
- Design engineers checklist
- Reducing surface friction
- Custom rubber moulding guide
- Rubber chemical compatibility database
2. Brainstorming, possible solutions & research
Whilst you are considering the criteria, constraints and possible design solutions it is worth bearing in mind that one nitrile is not the same as another! With the sophistication of synthetic rubber materials today, perfecting a compound is a bit like baking a cake and can often incorporate 20 different ingredients.
Our ‘Unseen Advantage’:
We excel at this stage through the combination of:
- Opening up solutions you may not have even considered
- Industry leading research & development
- Setting a benchmark for your rubber compound to achieve repeatable, consistent performance.
Useful content
- Custom vs standard rubber parts
- Natural vs synthetic rubber
- Material expertise
- Silicone versatility
- Low temperature FFKM
- Which metals can be bonded to rubber
3. Developing the design proposal
As you begin to hone in on your chosen approach our flexibility and proactiveness will help you refine and improve your design to ensure you get the best outcome for your application.
Our ‘Unseen Advantage’:
Bringing together our expertise and experience along with our patented moulding process often enables us to add value in the following ways:
- Specifying materials, such as FFKM or EPDM, that may get excluded by other manufacturers
- Improvement and refinement of parts you already have in production
Useful content
- The rubber to metal bonding process
- Rubber chemical compatibility
- Rubber moulding quality considerations
- Rubber hardness considerations
- Rubber tolerance considerations
- 4 top tips on temperature
4. Choosing a manufacturer
At DP Seals every operator is an inspector of their own work. Our experienced, well trained, quality focused team continues to push industry boundaries. So much so that many of our customers have been with us for years and we have developed a deep understanding of their businesses and built special relationships with their teams.
Our ‘Unseen Advantage’
We add extra value to your process in the following areas:
- Expertise in rubber to metal bonding, micro moulding and overmoulding,
- In house tool development
- The use of natural rubber for subsea and electrical resistance
- Increasing quality and reducing reject rates to the lowest possible levels
Useful content
5. Prototyping, testing, evaluating and refining
As you begin to test and refine your design we’ll work with you every step of the way with speed and maximum efficiency to ensure your product gets to market as quickly as possible.
Useful content
Our ‘Unseen Advantage’
We use a rubber like print material in our 3D printing to give you greater confidence in the process and end part.
Get in touch
Whatever stage you are at in your product development process we can help. Why not get in touch now to discuss your requirements?
