The journey of Seal Innovations began in 1954 as a division of Motion Australia’s Consolidated Bearings Company (CBC). After 67 years of cultivating the industry’s best sealing expertise – which included the acquisition of several sealing businesses – Seal Innovations has grown to be the largest supplier of sealing products, services, and support in Australia and New Zealand, with a distribution network of more than 15 branches.
Since its inception, Seal Innovations has earned its reputation as a ‘one stop shop’ for customers to find sealing solutions by partnering with some of the top industry solutions providers and original equipment manufacturers in the country to offer the widest range of sealing products available to the market.
“Reliable sealing solutions are critical for extending the life and improving the performance of food and beverage equipment in environments where there are regular washdown cycles, debris, or risk of incidental contamination,” says Bruce Ramsay, Technical Sales and Support representative for Seal Innovations.
“Australian food and beverage producers really rely on quality sealing solutions to prevent costly downtime on harvesting equipment, and we have succeeded in earning the trust of the industry through their unique ability to offer reliable sealing solutions for a wide range of food and beverage applications.”
With a product portfolio of more than 40,000 SKUs, Seal Innovation’s business centres around four core sealing technologies – Gaskets, Hydraulic, Rotary and Mechanical seals – specialising in designing and manufacturing custom in-house sealing solutions from their fabrication workshops in Sydney, Brisbane, and Perth that use CNC machining to make seals quickly and efficiently.
“Our custom seals workshops means that we have the ability to tailor solutions across all four sealing technologies to suit the specific needs of a food and beverage application,” says Ramsay. “Our team of technical experts and field engineers are focused on problem solving with quality and reliable products and services that can extend the life of equipment and maximise an operation’s productivity.”
A keen problem solver himself, Ramsay specialises in troubleshooting and developing custom hydraulic and O-ring sealing solutions for the hydraulic cylinders that are found in majority of farming and mobile equipment. He often works on-site at hydraulic repair shops, providing technical expertise and support in-situ.
Vital to hydraulic machinery, hydraulic seals are typically rubber or polyurethane rings that are captured in a groove or fixed in a combination of rings to block or separate fluid on reciprocating motion applications. In other words – they stop leaks.
“The basic principle of a hydraulic cylinder is to push, pull and move parts on a machine where linear motion and force are required,” Ramsay explains. “Every cylinder has a rod, piston, and a seal internally that stops oil from leaking out and a wiper seal externally to stop dust and dirt from permeating the hydraulics. For environments where contamination is a big risk factor, a wiper seal is very important to remove debris from the rod of the cylinder.”
“Then there is a piston sealing arrangement that actually makes the cylinder move back and forth, which includes the bearings, wear rings, and O-rings involved in sealing the actual cylinder itself,” he furthers. “A successful hydraulic seal will contain fluid within fluid power systems while excluding contamination.”
Recently, Ramsay visited a renowned Brisbane brewery site where there was an issue with the seals on their can filling machine.
“The can filling machine was a big rotating machine, where the cans run through so quickly that they are almost a blur. In the middle of where the machine is spinning, there is a sealing arrangement,” explains Ramsay. “I went in with a technical team to study the existing seals and the conditions they were operating under. What we found was that the existing seals were too hard and were leaking after a short time wreaking havoc on the production line.”
Ramsay suggested a rubber sealing solution that would be ideal for a high-speed operating machine. After a series of trials, the new solution proved to outperform the previous solution and provided better protection overall to the piece of rotating equipment.
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