Custom seals provided in a hurry

Within nine days of being asked to quote for the project, PWI had submitted a detailed offer, including full engineering drawings.

When Triumph Motorcycles required a new seal within a three-month lead time it turned to Pioneer Weston International, a division of Eriks UK.

The design and purchasing teams at Triumph Motorcycles needed help when extreme pre-production testing of prototypes of a new model revealed that enhanced sealing for the gearbox output shaft would improve performance and reliability.

Within nine days of being asked to quote for the project, PWI had submitted a detailed offer, including full engineering drawings.

Triumph placed an initial development order almost immediately and PWI worked quickly to complete the design and to manufacture production samples.

The seals were required to work continuously at temperatures in excess of 70C in an oil-laden environment on a shaft rotating at up to 3000rev/min.

PWI was substantially assisted by having its own in-house materials laboratory and dynamic test facilities.

This meant that the company was not dependent on the vagaries of external support and could shorten development, evaluation and testing times significantly.

As a result, the first samples were produced less than three weeks after the original request for a quotation had been issued, due to close collaboration and concurrent engineering between Triumph and PWI.

Working with these initial samples, PWI was able to confirm the dimensional tolerances of the seals and also that the material used in their manufacture met the requirements of the application.

The company then subjected the samples to rigorous validation test cycles, using its own in-house dynamic test rigs.

Three hundred hours of validation testing was completed and, at this point, the decision was taken to release products to Triumph Motorcycles so that it could carry out its own testing and evaluation.

Validation testing at PWI was, however, continued to a full 600 hours to ensure the full conformity of the seals.

The seals proved to be right first time.

This meant that an initial order for production quantities could be placed early in July for delivery early August - in plenty of time to meet Triumph's request.

Triumph Motorcycles later invited PWI to work on a new rotary lip seal to be used in the rear suspension strut of two current models.

PWI was able to maintain its reputation for speed by supplying a quotation and samples within a fourteen-day window.

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