Archives: Press Release

DP Seals, a leading supplier of high precision custom seals, gaskets and mouldings, has begun supplying a manufacturer of specialised breath alcohol analysis equipment with a custom designed bellow seal, forming an integral part of UK police breathalyser units. Wales-based Lion Laboratories are now using the seal in their range of breathalyser units, which capture samples for accurate breath alcohol analysis.

The DP Seals Bellow, which weighs 0.12 grams and are 9 x 7.5 mm barrel shaped pieces, will hold the air supplied before moving it in the right direction of the sensor. The part is made from silicone rubber and, given the importance of securing a precise sample, the flex and hardness of the seal is extremely accurate.

Lion Laboratories sourced DP Seals in order to gain more consistency with the product. After initial meetings between the two companies, DP Seals reviewed the specification and created new moulding tools and refined the material composition, the new bellow seal was then trialled amongst sample assemblies at Lion Laboratories Glamorgan-based branch before going into production.

The bellow itself, of which Lion Laboratories used 17,500 of in 2013, doesn’t come in contact with the alcohol breath sample. Instead, it fires the sample in and causes the suction motion. A breath is blown through a tube attached to a fuel cell, then an outlet which runs through to a pressure transfuser. The bellows will then open and close after drawing the air through the tube and the breath sample is captured and analysed.

Alan Holloway, Managing Director at Lion Laboratories comments: “We approached DP Seals for consistency purposes. The bellows are an extremely important and delicate product – they simply can’t be inert. This will result in false samples which is unacceptable to us and our customer. The bellow from DP Seals was very accurate towards our needs and we feel DP Seals understood our objectives and specifications from the outset.”

DP Seals Managing Director, Andrew Piper comments: “This contract reaffirms DP Seals’ reputation as a leading supplier of high precision custom seals. This product will play a pivotal role in ensuring UK police gain accurate readings in breathalyser units, thus playing a part in ensuring our roads are safer and drink drivers are punished. It is now our prerogative to become Lion Laboratories’ most reliable and trusted supplier and we look forward to forging a productive and healthy partnership.”

Lion Laboratories is based in Barry, South Wales and specialises in the field of breath alcohol analysis. It supplies much of the equipment used by the UK Police and exports to approximately 70 countries worldwide through a network of local distributors.

DP Seals is playing a vital role in the everyday lives of millions of London commuters. The company is supplying high performance rubber belts for Cubic Transportation System’s ticket transport machines at the gates of London Underground stations.

DP Seals has developed and supplied four separate belts for each of the 5,000 units currently in use on the London Underground. Cubic has established a global reputation for its products’ reliability – a vital consideration for this capital installation – and these belts play a key role.

Rubber belts can generate dust that chokes other internal mechanisms, leading to increased equipment downtime. Using its in-house precision tool room facility linked to advanced 3D CAD, DP Seals created moulds for the belts that added a precision profile to the belt edge.

This attention to detail has dramatically reduced dust generation – and hence unplanned downtime and maintenance costs – reinforcing Cubic’s standing as a high-reliability equipment supplier.

About CUBIC

Part of Cubic Corporation, Cubic Transportation Systems is the world’s leading turnkey solution provider of automated fare collection systems for public transport projects throughout the world. The company is just one of a number of multinationals to rely on DP Seals for high precision seals, gaskets and mouldings that now play a key role in a huge variety of industrial and commercial applications.

Seacon has chosen DP Seals to supply high-performance rubber seals and boots for its latest range of subsea optical fibre cable glands. These seals and boots, fundamental to the operation of Seacon’s highly innovative connector system, allow optical, electrical and hybrid electro-optic cables to be mated underwater safely and easily.

Increasingly, fibre-optic and hybrid cables are being used in deep water applications such as sonar, surveillance and real-time video systems, remotely piloted submarines and down-hole data logging equipment, as well as classic sub-sea telecommunications networks. To meet the exacting demands of in-field installation, DP Seals and Seacon have worked together to produce a novel cable gland technology that provides both anchorage and sealing onto each layer within the cable construction, i.e. outer sheath, steel tube and to each individual optical fibre.

The gland is based on Seacon’s proven hybrid dry-mate FITA MSSQ series connector, already deployed extensively in sub-sea cable networks.

DP Seals worked with Seacon from initial concept through to volume manufacture to develop the several seals and boots that are key to this connector. DP Seals selected a specially-formulated hydrogenated nitrile material because of its high tensile strength, salt water tolerance and effectiveness at the high pressures and low temperatures intrinsic to sub-sea environments.

Two nitrile sealing glands seal the outer sheath and steel tube, locked into place with tapered sleeves to ensure controlled compression is maintained at all times. Additional nitrile boots provide secondary sealing onto the individual optical fibres whilst also preventing the ingress of pressure compensating fluid from within the connector into the steel tube.

About Seacon

Seacon Limited is one of the world’s leading manufacturers of small-diameter, high-density connectors for military and commercial subsea applications. More information is available at www.seaconeurope.com

DP Seals, one of the UK’s foremost suppliers of precision custom rubber seals and mouldings, has helped Waters Corporation create an award-winning family of LC/MS instruments. Accuracy and on-time delivery of the seal sets were critical to the launch dates for this new instrument technology.

LC/MS (liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry) is an analytical chemistry technique combining the physical separation capabilities of liquid chromatography with the mass analysis capabilities of mass spectrometry. Mass spectrometry uses an ion source to convert molecules into ions, an electromagnetic mass analyzer to sort ions by mass, and a detector to measure the abundance of ions present. Waters’  design brief was to develop a range of universal ion sources that could be interchanged by laboratory LC/MS users without tools.

The stability of the ion source is of vital importance to the instrument’s overall performance so the user interface was key. Of paramount importance were the gas and solvent seals, which needed to be 100% safe and reliable during instrument operation and at each source open or interchange. Several custom rubber mouldings were required to seal specific regions of the source; pre-determined geometry dictated the location and form of the seals involved, which were all required to operate together in harmony.

DP Seals produced prototype seals in Viton® directly from 3D CAD data supplied by Waters. The exceptional liquid and gas resistance offered by Viton was critical to in-service reliability, as was the polymer’s ability to work consistently and reliably across a wide range of temperatures and in the presence of varying mechanical holding forces.

Once the prototype seals had been validated and the special polymer compound mixes agreed, DP Seals produced production tooling, meeting Waters’ requirement for part accuracy and quality – and the delivery schedules to support the company’s new instrument technology launch schedule.

Waters launched its Xevo product line, quickly gaining two awards and a commendation: Instrument Business Outlook 2008 best product of ASMS Award; Instrument Business Outlook 2009 Gold Award for Analytical Instrument for Industrial Design; and a commendation from the prestigious Design Week Awards for the category of Industrial Product Design.

About Waters Corporation

Waters Corporation creates business advantage for laboratory-dependent organizations by delivering practical and sustainable innovation to enable significant advancements in such areas as healthcare delivery, environmental management, food safety, and water quality worldwide. It pioneers a connected portfolio of separations science, laboratory information management, mass spectrometry and thermal analysis technologies specifically manufactured to provide a platform for customer success. More information is available at www.waters.com.

DP Seals is providing a key safety component in all screw terminal aluminium electrolytic capacitors manufactured by BHC Aerovox. These capacitors are used extensively in automatic and semi-automatic machinery around the world, making component safety -and hence end-user equipment safety – a primary consideration.

BHC Aerovox’s screw terminal, aluminium electrolytic capacitors incorporate a safety vent to relieve build-up of internal pressure caused by overstress or catastrophic failure; therefore, accuracy and consistency of action of this vent is vital to safe operation. DP Seals has manufactured two small form-factor moulded rubber safety plugs which incorporate a thin membrane designed to burst at either 40 or 70psi -safely relieving the internal pressure.

Installation is simple: the plugs simply push up through the top deck of the capacitor housing, adding nothing to the overall dimensions and sustaining the environmental specifications for the component. To ensure the ongoing operational safety of BHC Aerovox’s capacitors, DP Seals extensively tests the rubber compound prior to use in the manufacture of the plugs, another example of the company’s commitment to total customer satisfaction.

About BHC Aerovox

BHC Aerovox – a leading European manufacturer of large-can aluminium electrolytic capacitors – offers one of the widest ranges in Europe. Its components are used in a wide variety of professional and industrial applications, including inverters, power supplies, energy discharge and motor starting.

Recent advances in polymer 3D printing materials bring dramatically increased realism to printed prototype rubber mouldings, significantly speeding the time from CAD drawing to final tooling. To maintain its positions at the forefront of the industry DP Seals has added 3D printing to its tool room process.

DP Seals is a leading supplier of high precision custom seals, gaskets and mouldings that play a key role in a huge variety of applications, from Formula 1 racing cars to London Underground ticket machines. For many years, the company has provided a direct, high-efficiency CAD/CAM link from its clients’ engineer desktops to the in-house tool room, ensuring accurate prototype tooling in optimum time without compromising precision or quality. By augmenting this link with 3D printing of custom seals and mouldings, DP Seals can shorten this prototyping process and so further speed the clients’ development programmes.

For DP Seals, the catalyst to adopting this innovation is the recent availability of a range of rubber-like polymeric printing materials that exhibit many elastomeric characteristics – diverse Shore A hardness values, elongation at break, tear resistance and tensile strength. This level of flexibility is crucial to the client’s prototyping process, allowing problems to be ironed out – such as the fit of male/female mating, or ease of cable feed-through – and make any modifications prior to final tooling.

Adopting the latest 3D printing technology in our tool design department was the next logical step in speeding the prototyping process for our clients. It is really fast and, because we use a rubber-like print medium, the client can better visualise the end result and identify potential faults.”
Andrew Piper,  MD,  DP Seals