ENGINEERED SEAL PRODUCTS
Stein Seal is an innovation-driven company. In our industrial seal division, our highly capable seal engineering department is tasked with designing engineered seal products and devising innovative production and testing methods.
SEAL DESIGN & PRODUCTION
Occasionally, a customer needs a mechanical seal no longer produced by its original manufacturer. The company may have gone out of business or merely discontinued production of that particular seal. Meanwhile, your perfectly functional machine may be rendered inoperable without a working seal, and you are left with two options: find a replacement seal or replace the entire machine.
REPLACE THE SEAL, NOT THE MACHINE
Stein can reverse-engineer the seal for you. Typically, the reverse-engineering process begins with customer-provided samples of the subject seal. Working from these samples, Stein engineers determine the best manufacturing process to deliver the seal you need to breathe new life into your legacy machine. Chemical and physical analyses are performed on all critical components to determine the ideal material composition and manufacturing processes to replicate them.
Familiar with most types of seals, our team of experts can pinpoint the allowable dimensional variation of each part and establish the design parameters necessary to deliver optimal performance. Next, the parts are sized on calibrated coordinate-measuring machines to determine the exact dimensions of each component used.
ENGINEERING TEST LAB
Stein’s innovation is not limited to modeling and digital analysis. In our state-of-the-art engineering test lab, Stein engineers devise custom test plans to assess the performance of our seals under customer-specified operating conditions.
Our renowned test labs are staffed by highly qualified professional technicians utilizing industry-standard support programs and systems to gather test data and manage long-term test strategies.
- With over 25 dynamic test rigs, including 2 inter-shaft rigs, Stein can offer real-world dynamic testing on seals and mechanical systems.
- A staff of 40, including engineers, designers, methods personnel, many of whom have over 20 years of design and engineering experience
- Over 100 proprietary design and analysis tools
- Stein has developed specialized software, tools, and apps to research and develop ideas for new products and their associated systems.
- These design and engineering tools serve as the basis of our seal design acumen but supports the further development of mechanical, design, engineering and systems features.
- Over 20 proprietary Engineering Design Standards
- Early on, Stein saw the need for clearly established design standards for the betterment of the organization and the industry.
- Stein has led the way in establishing industry-adopted standards.
PATENTED HYDRODYNAMIC LIFT-OFF TECHNOLOGY
Among the many innovations Stein Seal has introduced to the seal industry is our patented Lift-Off technology for mechanical face seals and dynamic circumferential seals. Face seals are often installed where a rotating shaft passes through a stationary housing. They are designed to inhibit the escape of process fluids and gases while preventing the intrusion of outside particles and contaminants during pump operation.
The main drawback of conventional face seals is that they are often required to operate without lubrication. This inevitably results in shortened life due to the wear caused by dry-running contact between the two sealing faces. Stein’s patented seal ring eliminates this problem with proprietary geometry. Specially engineered spiral grooves are inscribed into the sealing face gap. As the seal ring rotates around the runner, a buffer fluid, or compressed gas, is forced into these grooves on the face of the runner, creating a film of gas underneath the rotating seal ring. This causes the primary sealing elements to separate or lift, preventing the sealing faces from making direct contact. The thin film of gas is held in place by the pressure differential, maintaining the integrity of the seal without generating friction along the shaft.