Rubber Molding

Custom Molded Rubber

Uniflex is a rubber parts manufacturer that offers high-quality, custom rubber compression and transfers urethane molding to produce high-quality, economical rubber products that adhere to your specific requirements. Our custom molded rubber products are available in many different materials, colors, and durometers (hardness’), allowing us to tailor products to your unique application. We aim for customer satisfaction and apply our many decades of manufacturing experience to produce quality rubber solutions that our customers have come to rely on, making us a trusted rubber molding company.

Molding Rubber

The rubber molding process starts with a drawing. Usually, a customer will send a drawing file over of the product they want produced with average annual usage, quantity, and any other pertinent information for the manufacturing process. Next, a quote is sent over and if approved production can start on the compression molds or transfer molds (depending on the job).

Compression molds are usually machined within a day and can enter production very quickly. Transfer molds are a little more involved but are still very quickly produced. These molds are sent off to the production department where they are used for casting rubber parts. In the production department, molds are loaded with the unvulcanized rubber compound of choice and forced shut in a heated hydraulic rubber press. This forces the material into every space of the mold cavity and cures it using heat and compression. The end result, when the mold is opened, is a custom molded rubber part that is ready to be de-flashed and sent to a customer.

Custom Silicone Molding

At Uniflex, we offer a wide range of rubber compounds used for manufacturing rubber products, however, our most popular compound is silicone. We offer a very wide range of silicone compounds in various colors and durometers. Generally, we have material stocked and ready for short notice jobs. This helps us keep job costs low and produce custom molded silicone parts with short lead times.

This material is commonly used for high temperature applications for parts such as silicone seals and silicone gaskets.

Common Rubber Products:

 

Rubber Gaskets

Gaskets made of rubber are excellent for sealing face to face. Rubber gaskets can be compression molded, transfer molded, or die cut. The manufacturing method depends on the critical dimension required for end use. Gasket rubber material can include EPDM, Viton, silicone, Neoprene, and Nitrile (among others).

Gasket Materials & Properties:

• Neoprene – Neoprene gaskets can be molded in a Shore A hardness range of 15-95A. These gaskets have very good rebound and resistance to animal fats, vegetable fats, oxidizing chemicals, greases, and oils.
• Nitrile – Nitrile gaskets can be molded in the Shore hardness range of 30-95A. They have good rebound and resistance to many chemicals, hydraulic fluids, hydrocarbons, oils, and greases.
• EPDM – EPDM gaskets can be molded in the durometer range of 30-90 Shore A. Gaskets made from this material have resistance to ozone, oxidizing chemicals, as well as animal and vegetable oils.
• Silicone –  Silicone gaskets are excellent for high temperature applications. Silicone can be molded in durometers of 30-80A and has fairly good rebound combined with resistance to sodium hydroxide, ozone, and moderate oxidizing chemicals.  It’s operating temperature is very wide (-60F to 550F).

For more physical and technical data, please visit our rubber technical data page. This lists all of our rubber compounds with a good description of physical properties. You can also reference a durometer chart to compare Shore hardness to common everyday items.

Rubber Seals

Rubber seals are widely used across all industries from automotive to aerospace to prototyping and testing. Seals made of rubber are generally made through compression molding but can also be die cut. Seals can be made in any shape or size and come in a wide range of shore hardnesses. Furthermore, any rubber compound can be used, including higher performance thermo set polyurethane plastic.

Rubber Bushings

Rubber bushes or bushings are a staple in everyday industry. They are commonly used in the automotive industry for suspension bushings, torque arm bushings, sway arm bushings, ball joint bushings, and many others. These bushings are also used in prosthetic limbs, hydraulic cylinder joints, and crane components. Bushings can be made with traditional rubber or be replaced using higher performance polyurethane material.

Test Seals and Gaskets

We offer any form of custom test seals and/or gaskets. We understand that sometimes parts need to be tested in small quantities before production or even used in small job quantities for leak testing or other applications. Uniflex is setup to process both high and low volume orders. That being said, we are able to produce anywhere from one piece to thousands of pieces. There is no minimum quantity on orders and expedited jobs are accepted.