DTi has been supplying standard and custom electrical enclosure gaskets, seals, grommets, and wire protection for nearly 40 years.
In that time DTi has worked with hundreds of clients. Its design and engineering capabilities coupled with its material knowledge create a flexibility that few can match. This helps DTi develop and deliver unique custom solutions quickly, efficiently, and affordably to meet clients’ needs.
DTi has an extensive range of standard products that can be used as a starting point:
- Grommets: Spring-Fast® best in class grommet edging has 11 standard variants.
- Seals: Seal-Fast™ Seals hundreds of profiles many off the shelf. America Made.
- RCMs: Fast-Drop™ Radius control modules (a.k.a. waterfall routers) in varying sizes/arrays
- Sleeving/Wrap: Protect-Fast™ general and advanced use wiring sleeving & wrap products
DTi is committed to investing in R&D and exploring other services that enable manufacturers to take advantage of the efficiencies they offer. All to ISO 9001 and AS 9100 standards.
DTi offers custom product services in 6 main areas:
- Custom grommet edging
- Custom designed seal profiles
- Custom one-piece seals
- Custom sleeving and wrap
- Custom kitting and cutting
- Custom fiber management (radius control modules/RCMs)
DTi can modify or adapt any of their standard products.
1. CUSTOM GROMMET EDGING
The Spring-Fast® grommet edging series can be adapted to fit your specific needs by modifying a range of design elements. The foundation of its high performance lies in its spring steel castles that press into the edge to grip tightly even in challenging conditions which protects your wiring/equipment. It has proven itself across many industries in its 35-year existence. With that at its core, these elements can be modified.
- Size/Profile
- Castle Geometry
- Flexibility across axes
- Polymer Coating
- Added Sacrificial Cushion
- TPE Encapsulation
- High Heat Resistant
- Mil-Spec Qualified
- Flush Mounting
- Custom Pantone® colors
DTi created a specific variant with a very small profile that met the client’s needs
2. CUSTOM DESIGNED SEAL PROFILES
Standards seals are available in a wide range of materials, compression loads, and dimensions; however, an off-the-shelf solution may not fully meet the needs of your application.
A custom seal is tailored to the requirements and restrictions your application needs, which ensures it offers the exact—rather than approximate—performance characteristics required.
DTi’s in-house Collaborative Finite Element Analysis (CFEA) technology can model and evaluate a design quickly, minimizing critical lead times and overall production costs.
The CFEA process considers the different relevant material and environmental parameters that may affect sealing performance in order to evaluate the performance of proposed profiles. Elements like flame, smoke and toxicity (FST), corrosion resistance, resistance to heat, water, oils, or UV, food/pharma grade requirements, or the need to conform to the radii on the equipment.
Materials and profiles are evaluated on Compression Load Deflection (CLD) tests to verify that the seal can maintain elastic properties through prolonged compressive stress. This happens before progressing to an initial FAI production test which is faster and has a lower cost profile. With focus, the finished product can be ready to ship in as little as 7-10 weeks.
3. CUSTOM ONE-PIECE SEALS
One-piece seals perform better than seals with un-bonded terminal ends and offer performance benefits of greater efficiency, faster production, and lower installation costs. OEM’s are starting to see the benefits.
DTi estimates that based on a $60 shop rate manufacturers can save 29.1% of total install costs using a one-piece seal. Details here – Why One-Piece Seals Make Sense for OEMs
Seal-Fast ™ one-piece seals are made by bonding the ends of an EPDM/Silicone seal into a one-piece finished gasket. They are extensively used for sealing and protecting doors, windows, or electronics from environmental elements like water/moisture, dust, heat, cold, or gases.
One-piece seals offer these important performance benefits to OEMs:
- Edges are sealed without terminating ends, providing complete 360⁰ protection
- Higher efficiency: faster/easier to apply, no secondary operations like gluing or precision cuts
- Can be designed to fit with a slight stretch so that it forms a tighter seal without deformation.
- Lowers the Cost of Poor Quality (CoPQ) for manufacturers with lower failure rates vs. seals bonded onsite.
- Minimize workplace health and safety concerns related to VOCs, glues, solvents or Hazmat.
- At a $60 shop rate it lowers total install costs by 29.1%.
- They also allow the potential for increased use of automation/robotics in the assembly process.
One piece seal-frame
4. CUSTOM SLEEVING AND WRAP
Recently a client approached DTi with a product emergency -they needed our expert help in protecting some of their vital equipment.
The client sold consumer power strips. Unfortunately, a number of strips had started fires in people’s homes. This posed a significant financial and liability risk that had to be fixed!
One option was a large and complex inventory refit that would cost a lot of time and money. However, the company wanted to avoid the time and cost of doing that if at all possible.
Fires were starting because a very common but important component in their strips was overheating. This component was the metal-oxide varistor (MOV) -sometimes called a Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS).
DTi’s custom yet simple solution was to customize the configuration of its sophisticated high-temperature fiberglass sleeving – Protect-Fast™ Expander- to create a simple yet highly effective “sock.” A short length of sleeving was cut, stitch sealed at one end, and then placed over the MOV/CMOS and held in place with adhesive. Simple, easy, and effective. It worked perfectly in client testing and was a rapid and simple fix. You can read more about this particular application here.
MOV/CMOS Component Cover
5. CUSTOM KITTING AND CUTTING
DTi seals and grommets come in strips or continuous runs. However, in-house cutting and kitting services help you greatly reduce the time and complexity of installing grommets and seals in a production environment.
Custom Cutting will ensure that each piece is a uniform length and has a clean edge. It will greatly reduce material waste, and save you valuable time. They are immediately ready for installation and virtually eliminate material waste. DTi also offers pre-fitting the products onto your components (see below).
Kits can consist of labeled and packaged pre-cut lengths that can either be included with the finished product for end-customer installation or used on an assembly line to greatly reduce confusion and material waste. This reduces multiple measuring and cutting operations and makes the installation of the DTi products as efficient as possible.
6. CUSTOM RADIUS CONTROL MODULE (RCM)
A client reviewed DTi’s off-the-shelf Fast-Drop® fiber management RCM (a.k.a. waterfall router) for an application but asked DTi to help as they realized they needed higher walls to accommodate the larger wire/fiber that would be used.
DTi custom designed two products to meet their needs: an extra-large RCM with high walls and a single piece 360-degree spool for service loop flexibility. Both these solutions are now in production:
Standard Fast-Drop, In Use, and Larger Custom Size
New 360 degree service Loop
CUSTOMIZED SOLUTIONS
Do you need a custom version of any of our products? DTi can create a solution quickly and efficiently.
Please contact Sales@devicetech.com or use the Custom Services Request Form
For even faster service call DTi +1-508-229-2000
