Identification

Identifying Seals

Being able to uniquely identify seals has provided our customers a significant advantage over the years. In some cases, the identification is purely for visibility purposes during installation. In other cases, the identification has everything to do with product conformance, traceability or ensuring the right black seal is installed in the right location.

Years ago, the seal industry developed a list of colors for O-rings to represent polymer families. The hope was to offer assurance the correct basic polymer family was placed in the right area of service. Maybe color coding O-rings would help avoid something as erroneous as placing an EP O-ring where a nitrile O-ring ought to be. 

The industry’s answer to this was to designate black for nitrile, brown for fluorocarbon, red for Neoprene, rust for Silicone, blue for fluorosilicone, and purple for EP. While colored compounds sound like good theory, compounding colored materials often results in compromising on a key physical property and sealing characteristic. Additionally, it does not provide visibility to see if the black O-ring is in place on a black housing.