Ceetak is one of the UK’s leading elastomeric sealing providers; offering a comprehensive design service from experienced application engineers as well as standard catalogue items. Working in partnership with Parker Prädifa Seals (for over 30 years as their accredited UK Distributor), Ceetak offer a wide range of materials and design support from Parker’s world class manufacturing facilities to satisfy the demanding application requirements of the Life Sciences industry.
Typically, the Life Sciences industry (medical, drug development, pathogen detection, pharmaceutical and bio-technologies) can pose various challenges when designing elastomeric seals and recommending suitable materials for particular sealing applications. Aggressive media, varying temperature ranges and the typical accreditations normally required for these type of applications (such as FDA/USP Class VI) can make providing an effective sealing process far from straightforward.
With years of sealing experience, and the latest technological material developments available from Parker Prädifa, Ceetak’s team of product specialists and application engineers help ease the burden of designing sealing methods for these specialist applications.
For the Life Sciences industry alone, Ceetak offer 19 specially formulated compound recipes; these include different grades of EPDM, FKM, NBR, FFKM and Silicon.
Each of these compounds has FDA or USP accreditations, and has been developed specifically to provide excellent long term sealing properties in Life Sciences applications including; steam, high temperature, high purity, low extractables and fluid resistance to aggressive chemicals.
A major UK valve manufacturer approached Ceetak with a sealing problem; they had an application involving o-rings in steam valves for sterilising pipework within pharmaceutical and dairy processing plants, and were struggling to find a suitable solution from their current supplier.
The size and geometry of the o-ring was standard, but providing a suitable material was more challenging; the application involved high working temperatures and pressures and potential contact with aggressive lactic acid at high temperatures. USP Class VI approval was also required.
Ceetak recommended newly developed V1274-75. This FKM compound had been originally developed with aggressive chemical applications in mind, but the ingredient formulation also allowed the material to perform exceptionally well in superheated steam (uncommon with standard FKM compounds).
Once V1274 had been selected, Ceetak arranged for the material to be submitted for testing to U.S. Pharmacopoeia against Class VI; the requirements of which outline that compounds must be made from ingredients with clear histories of biocompatibility that meet tighter requirements for low extractables. It passed within a matter of weeks, and the valve manufacturer was so impressed with the superiority and cost effectiveness of V1274 that they subsequently changed the specification for other valve product lines to include these new o-rings.