Special O-rings for an automotive application
Our customer manufactures high performance oil and vacuum pump solutions, and approached our engineers with a new O-ring application for review.
The application
Our customer required an FKM (Viton™) 60 shore O-ring to meet Porsche material specification PN707 Class 2 (Oil), Class 5 (Fuel/FAME mix) and Class 12 (Blowby gas).
This was a very cost sensitive project and the lead time required was very tight; especially as we did not have an existing grade in our materials portfolio to meet this specification.
The challenges
Our engineers reviewed the application and we provided two material options. The first was a lower cost grade of FKM (Viton™) A grade, that would possibly meet the Porsche specification required. The second material was a medium to higher cost FKM (Viton™) B grade that would definitely meet the specification.
We supplied quotation for both material options and these included; production tooling, PPAP Level 3 submission (with samples), testing programme for both material variants and a pre-production batch of O-rings. Because of the urgent nature of the project, we were able to accommodate PPAP Level 3 grade O-rings for both materials to be manufactured from the same tool. Also, in order to save time we would conduct material testing in tandem with the manufacture and preparation of the the production tool. The choice of compound to be used in the tool would be made on review of the results of material testing.
On completion of the material testing, the customer reviewed the results with Porsche and the decision to produce O-rings from the FKM B grade was made.
Customer satisfaction
By this stage of testing, production tooling was complete, allowing manufacture of PPAP 3 samples and the pre-production batch to commence. Pre-production O-rings were supplied to the customer in the promised 12-week lead time together with PPAP Level 3 and PPAP 3 samples.