Darcoid Specification Support - Performance Creep Controlled

Custom specs made easy

To ensure the seals installed on your program 5 years from now will perform just as well as those you qualify for today.

Many designers make the mistake of calling out a catalog size, material family type, and durometer and leave it at that. If they find an ASTM “string” callout they’ll throw that on the print also, often without really understanding what exactly the ASTM string is describing. Recall waiting to happen.

ASTM callouts definitely have their place, especially in automotive applications. Darcoid is a member of the American Society of Testing and Materials (ASTM) and we are well versed in the effective deployment of D2000 callouts. We also understand the limitations of the system outside of automotive applications.

Seal Performance Creep

Something of a secret in the industry, Seal Performance Creep is an insidious problem that can derail your product’s performance without warning, and often in a way that takes you on a long and expensive journey to identify and fix. With shorter and shorter employment tenures a reliance on “tribal knowledge” carries heavy risk. As OEM’s outsource sub-assemblies or full assembly, whole supply chains can be replaced. New suppliers faced with generic specifications will supply generic components. Sometimes they work just fine. Sometimes they don't. A seal is inexpensive unless it fails.

We developed a set of tools you can use to prevent this from happening. Simple specs to drive sophisticated control processes. Each focus on one of these key aspects:

Verification of seal material - FTIR testing of each lot against baseline spectra (material’s unique “fingerprint”)

Dimensional Inspection process with tolerancing and AQL sampling appropriate to the criticality of your program

Workmanship inspection appropriate to the seal performance in your given hardware and use case.

Periodic Material Validation checks to assure that your critical material physical properties continue to meet original baseline performance. Tested in YOUR fluids or temperatures. So, the data is relevant to YOUR application.

Standard industry callouts for seal tolerancing, workmanship, and physical properties are typically built on specification platforms developed by committees serving early aerospace or automotive applications. The chemical compatibility of seal materials and fluids/media is often generic at best.

Our advanced specifications support is premised on the realization that our customers who are pushing limits on speed, temperatures, and bespoke fluids deserve performance specs tailored to their unique use applications.