Continue to Site

Eng-Tips is the largest engineering community on the Internet

Intelligent Work Forums for Engineering Professionals

  • Congratulations KootK on being selected by the Eng-Tips community for having the most helpful posts in the forums last week. Way to Go!

Dynamic O-ring seal, rotary axial face seal

Status
Not open for further replies.

bdeuell

Mechanical
Jan 24, 2012
15
I am attempting to seal a an output of a gearbox against water and dust. This seal is intended to make the joint weather resistant and the pressure differential will be minimal. It needs to be cheap so I was hoping to use an O-ring. The O-ring would need to seal in the axial direction between two rotating faces with an ID of .375". I referenced the Parker O-ring handbook but they only described radial seals for rotating shafts. Is it possible to create an axial rotary shaft seal with an O-ring? Is there any reference material that would provide grove dimensions for this configuration?
 
Replies continue below

Recommended for you

PolyPak. Much more robust for your application.

Regards,
Cockroach
 
You want the seal surface to be in the axial, as opposed to radial direction, if I read the OP correctly. I see no reason it couldn't work, but it's not a common application; it's easier to control the runout/wobble of a shaft than an endplate/cap, and the endplate needs some way to hold the gap "closed" (i.e. spring loading?). In general, the dynamic O-ring seal requires higher tolerance controls to reduce the effect of shaft runout on e-gap, and to hold a smaller range of useful seal compression (smaller is better because it reduces O-ring friction and wear). Take a look at the amount of ring compression generated by the groove dimensions in the Parker handbook, comparing radial seal geometries between the static and dynamic cases. Then take a stab at using the same compression range for the face seal geometry (i.e. slightly deeper, but more tightly toleranced, groove depth).
 
Thanks for your responses. I think I'm going to take a stab at using an o-ring and creating my own groove dimensions based off the compression in the radial seal. I liked the Forsheda v-ring but would prefer to use a cheaper seal if possible, I will keep it in mind if I fail with the o-rings.
 
When I web search "axial face seal" there are a number of companys with "off the shelf" products.

Wouldn't one of those work?
 
For the v-ring, just machine the correct housing face and the correct shaft diameter and not screw around with developing a groove($) and clearance($) for a 'cheap' o-ring.

Ted
 
Hi!

O-ring can be a good seal for rotating app both radial and axial, alwayss having a good hardware design, and working conditions

Grove design will be the same(just interpole sizes) on the ones from your preferred catalogue


 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Part and Inventory Search

Sponsor