Rubber Products Editing and Proofreading Services

A seal is specified, fitted, and fails in fourteen months against an expected life of ten years. The compound was correct for the fluid and correct for the temperature. What nobody wrote down was that the fluid and the high temperature occur together during a two-hour cleaning cycle every night, and that the compound is fine with either and destroyed by both.

We edit what rubber and elastomer manufacturers produce — compound specifications and material data, chemical and fluid compatibility documentation, service life and temperature range statements, application guidance and selection documentation, ageing, storage and shelf life documentation, seal and component drawings and tolerance documentation, testing and qualification reports, failure analysis and complaint responses, installation and fitting instructions, and customer-facing selection guidance. Our editors work on the statement of what the part will survive.

The service condition and compatibility statement is where rubber components are either correctly selected or set up to fail, and its failure is listing properties independently. A compatibility chart giving a rating for a fluid, and a datasheet giving a temperature range, invite a customer to satisfy both separately and combine them into a condition the material cannot take. We work through these so the service statement is written as combinations rather than as parameters — this fluid at this temperature for this proportion of the duty cycle — since almost every unexpected elastomer failure is a combination nobody assessed; so the temperature range distinguishes continuous from intermittent exposure with the duration that makes it intermittent, given that a material rated to 150 °C usually means peaks and not a shift; so the compatibility rating states what it was based on, whether immersion testing, published data or an analogous compound, because these are very different levels of evidence; so dynamic and static applications are separated, as compression set and abrasion behave nothing alike; so ageing and shelf life is stated with the storage conditions that assume it, and with what happens to a part fitted after that period; so the failure modes are described so a customer can recognise them — swelling, hardening, cracking, extrusion, spiral failure — with what each one indicates; and so the statement says what evidence would be needed to qualify the part for a condition outside it. Statements written this way prevent the failure rather than explaining it.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including compounds, test data and customer information. We are editors rather than polymer chemists or application engineers, and we offer no view on compatibility, service life or material selection. What we can do is make the statement describe the conditions in combination.