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Unleashing the Potential of Custom Metal Designs: Overcoming Limitations in Shaping Steel

Michael Shealy, Senior Applications Engineer from Technetics in Columbia sheds light on the intricacies of shaping steel, particularly in the realm of custom designs. While circular steel seals serve many purposes, there are instances where unique hardware situations demand alternative shapes such as squares, rectangles, or slots. This poses a challenge that Technetics excels in…

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Michael Shealy, Senior Applications Engineer from Technetics in Columbia sheds light on the intricacies of shaping steel, particularly in the realm of custom designs. While circular steel seals serve many purposes, there are instances where unique hardware situations demand alternative shapes such as squares, rectangles, or slots. This poses a challenge that Technetics excels in addressing with its extensive capabilities.

The process of shaping steel typically involves starting with a circular seal and stretching it to achieve the desired form. However, this stretching process imposes significant stress on the seals, leading to certain limitations that need to be considered during the design phase.

One critical limitation highlighted by the engineer is the requirement for corners in the shape design to be at least six times the cross-section of the steel’s free height or cross-section. This guideline ensures structural integrity and optimal performance of the seal.

Moreover, the engineer emphasizes the impact of corner tightness on the overall stiffness of the seal. As the corners are compressed and experience radial movement, hoop stress becomes a significant factor to consider. Therefore, in locations where shape designs incorporate corners, a slightly stiffer flange design is necessary to accommodate the additional stiffness due to hoop stress.

By sharing these insights, Technetics aims to guide customers and provide them with valuable knowledge for their unique hardware situations. Their expertise in shaping metal steels and their understanding of the limitations involved enable them to deliver tailored solutions that meet specific needs.

Video TranscriptExpand ↓

On one of the application design engineers with Technics in Columbia. Today, I wanted to talk a little bit about shaping metal steels. So, we do mostly custom steel designs, and One of the more custom side of that is dealing with customers who got unique hardware situations where a circular steel is just not gonna work They need something to drop into a groove that has to have a shape of like a square, a rectangle, a slot, this happens a lot for just various different needs, and it's something that we have a lot of capability of doing. But there are some general limitations to doing this when trying to more medicines. Primarily, how we go about do doing sheet sales is we'll start with a circular seal, and we're gonna stretch it into its final form. This stretching process puts a lot of stress into the seals, and can cause some limitations when trying to actually go about that process. One of the biggest limitations that we try to give guidance to our customers is is that on any corner that is present in the shape design, it needs to be at minimum six times the cross section of the steel free height or steel cross section. Both of those are to be used interchangeably. One of the other things that we want to mention is, in those corners, the tighter that that corner is, it's gonna be more stiff. Because that's, you know, has when it's being compressed, has to move, both radially inwards and outwards. And in that process of moving, hoop Shessel will become a big factor. So in any of the joints where there is a shape design and there are corners present, you need to be aware that probably needs to be a little bit stiffer of a flange design in that location, so that you can accommodate this extra stiffness due to hoot stress. Hope this helps, and let's hope there's anything we can look at for you.

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Technetics Group

Engineered seals and components for semiconductor, aerospace, and nuclear.

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