Electrical + Electronics

By Jackie Hackett, director of sales and marketing, APM Hexseal Llc

For most manufacturers, equipment and system failures can be the stuff of nightmares. When one thing fails, it may have ripple effects that end up endangering your entire operation.

While everyday wear and tear can certainly affect your equipment, it’s often substances found in your equipment’s environment that are the most damaging - such as water, chemicals, and dirt. When these materials come into contact with your equipment, they can threaten to contaminate, damage, and even ruin your electronics, which can send shockwaves across your entire system.

Ubiquitous substances like water and dirt are hazardous in their own right, but for equipment located outdoors, these materials can become even more dangerous. You’re not only facing some serious environmental challenges, but extreme changes in temperature paired with increasingly frequent hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, and blizzards are becoming the norm.

As we delve into the warm summer months, hurricane season is just around the corner and shaping up to be a year with above average hurricane strength and activity. The environmental effects brought upon by serious weather events can be especially threatening to mechanical and electronic instruments, making it critical to find protective solutions.

Opening the flood gates

Flooding is one of the greatest threats extreme weather events pose to mechanical equipment. Severe floods cause much more than moisture damage, as flood waters gather debris, dirt, oil, waste, and other contaminants and carry them along. These contaminants can get into equipment and cause severe damage. This type of damage to improperly protected equipment can be wildly unpredictable and financially catastrophic.

APM Hexseal’s line of sealing solutions can help commercial and industrial sites protect electronic equipment against possible damage, contamination and failure caused by flooding. These products shield electronics, enabling them to withstand prolonged exposure to dangerous contaminants. There’s an old saying: Forewarned is forearmed. Preparation is key to ensuring your electronics remain safe during any extreme weather event.

Electronics sealing solutions

For 70 years, APM Hexseal has been providing customers with reliable, secure sealing solutions for a wide array of fields and industries. We know what the cost of failure is for our customers, so we strive every day to prevent them from ever experiencing that failure. This is the driving force behind our efforts to create cost-effective, high-quality products.

We offer a complete line of electronics sealing solutions, including sealing hardware and boots, designed to protect sensitive electronic components and instruments from a variety of invasive and damaging elements. Here are a few of our favorite products that can help put another layer between your equipment and hazardous moisture and other contaminants:

• Seelskrews®/Seelbolts® - our Seelskrews and Seelbolts offer a reliable and reusable seal that prevents dust, air, water, lubricants, liquids, and gaseous substances from contaminating your instruments. Conversely, they also excel at containment of substances. They’re vibration resistant, making them the ideal choice for applications that experience day-to-day jarring or repetitive movement. APM Hexseal’s Seelskrews and Seelbolts are available in many standard thread sizes and with various Oring elastometer options to ensure that they fit your unique application.
• Seelnuts® - our Seelnuts are innovative self-sealing hexagonal nuts that can be used with ordinary screws, bolts, and studs. Use as a conventional nut makes them a quick and easy sealing option for many applications - particularly those that need to withstand high internal or external pressures. Made from a high-quality rubber, these self-sealing nuts provide a positive seal along the threaded section of the nut and the surface it contacts, eliminating the need for gaskets, sealing compounds, or other coatings along the contact surface. Additionally, our Seelnuts are reusable, so they can easily be reapplied - making them a cost-effective and efficient option.
• Seeloc® washers - the design of Seeloc washers bonds molded silicone rubber to specially formed stainless steel washers. Like our Seelnuts, our Seeloc washers can be used with conventional screws, bolts, or studs, making them an easy alternative in place of regular washers in almost any application. The washers provide extra strength as the silicone rubber creates a unique, high-pressure seal under the head of the associated fasteners. Though versatile enough for nearly any application, these washers make excellent plugs for knockout holes found in control boxes or electrical cabinets. Like APM Hexseal’s other products, these washers are also reusable, making them ideal for applications that require regular maintenance or adjustments.
• Circuit breaker boots - using our custom silicone material, RUBRGLAS®, our lever-actuated circuit breaker boots protect breakers from weather exposure, washings, salt water, lubricants, solvents, dust, dirt, grease, and more, without interfering with the circuit breaker’s operation or status recognition. We offer both front-of-panel and back-of-panel options to fit your particular need and application. No matter which you choose, you can be sure that APM Hexseal’s circuit breaker boots will extend the longevity of your circuit breaker and protect the security of your system as a whole.
• Rocker boots - APM Hexseal’s rocker boots use rocker switches, which do not include a threaded mounting nut.  Most of our rocker boots do not include an insert or frame of any kind, and they’re designed to be inserted as an added component during the switch installation, while also providing protection against splashing water, salt spray, and other liquids. Like our circuit breaker boots, our rocker boots use our own RUBRGLAS® for optimal protection.

At APM Hexseal, we pride ourselves on offering a wide selection of products that fit almost any application and industry. We are a time-tested company serving customers in a wide range of sectors including military, defense, agriculture, marine, food and beverage, warehousing and distribution, construction, drilling, medical and healthcare, power and energy, as well as manufacturing and industrial industries.

We also understand that a standard design doesn’t always suit the specific needs of every application. We have a team of customisation experts prepared to create a customised sealing solution specific to the needs of your facility or operation. We also have a strict “all-under-one-roof” policy, which means we will handle your entire order – from the first contact, to design, to manufacturing – under the roof of our own New Jersey facility.

With another hurricane season bringing with it the potential for more violent storms, it’s important to be prepared for almost any weather emergency. While we certainly hope that you never have to experience a catastrophic failure in your equipment or system, part of responsible operation means preventing those failures. This can be achieved by taking steps to protect yourself and your electronics from potential damage by water, salt, and other contaminants in the event that the worst happens.

Our products carry numerous quality certifications, many are recognized by UL, and all are reusable to promote sustainability and ease in your operation. APM Hexseal products provide you with a smart, economical choice for NEMA-rated enclosures, as well as applications that require frequent maintenance or access. When failure is not an option—Cover it. Seal it. Protect it.

We have the solutions available to make sure you’re fully capable of avoiding catastrophic failures due to environmental contamination. Contact our team of sealing experts at APM Hexseal today for more information.