Design – Sealing the deal, digitally
I talked about the importance of gaining trust in my previous blog. In the context of our business, trust is built on our customers’ confidence in our ability to solve the issues they are facing. Whether it’s temperature, pressure, aggressive media, long bolt spans or low bolt loads, we have seen it all during the past 80 years. And even if there’s something we haven’t seen, we’ll most certainly find a way to solve it.
The good old days are not coming back
A lot has changed over the decades due to globalization-driven outsourcing. Very few large OEMs or process industry plants have their designs completely in their own hands anymore, meaning they rely on third parties for design applications.
On the one hand this is good, as it means that specialized professionals are doing the engineering. On the other hand, some aspects such as reasonable tolerances and especially sealability may be neglected. In the good old days, the design team worked in the same building and got direct feedback from manufacturing if something couldn’t be done.
Complex problems sometimes have simple solutions
Nowadays, it may be difficult to give feedback on a project that is spread across continents and involves mostly faceless organizations instead of real people. And when the problems neglected during the design phase pop up during prototyping and testing, it’s often a bit too late to maneuver around them – at least on your own.
When these problems revolve around sealing, we are here to help. Solving sealing issues is our bread and butter, even in tight schedules. Our record time is 38 minutes from order to delivery. While we may not break records in every project, our strength lies in our flexibility, willingness to help, and our multidisciplinary Design Board approach. These are qualities that larger players may struggle to provide.
Standing out from the crowd
As we are digging deeper and learning more about our new target markets in Sweden, German-speaking Europe and the United States, we have found that in addition to the large well-known players, we are also competing against hundreds of “one man in a garage” type of manufacturers.
These small players have their own strengths. They usually operate locally and know their clients’ products by heart, but continuity, development and designing something new may not be their cup of tea.
From trial and error to trial and success
It just so happens that continuity, development and designing new solutions are something we are heavily concentrating and investing in. The traditional trial and error method is an example of the kind of elements we are now steering away from. Of course, testing is still needed in the future, but it is not necessarily the most efficient design method in applications that we are involved in.
Our goal is to ensure that our products do what they are designed to do already in the digital world, and then confirm their functionality through physical test runs.
Diving into the future of gasket design
I am currently finalizing a project regarding the FEA of a hydrogen fuel cell – both topics that hold great promise for our future endeavors. The idea is to create a simulation model of the application, a common practice in modern engineering. Our twist is that we can also create material models of the gaskets thanks to our flexible prototype process and testing capabilities. The application is then replicated in the physical domain to see how well the simulation model matches the real world.
After a couple of iterations, we’ll hopefully have a recipe for replicating different sealing scenarios on the computer screen before moving on to physical testing. This is something that potentially revolutionizes our design capabilities and gives us a definite competitive edge over your local handyman.
If you want to learn more about our approach to Smarter Sealing for a Safer Tomorrow, we invite you to join us at the CIMAC Congress in Busan, South Korea, from June 12 to 16. Alternatively, you can contact us using your preferred communication method.
