NORTHERN ENGINEERING (SHEFFIELD) LTD SIGNIFICANTLY ENHANCES ITS RUBBER TO TITANIUM
BONDING CAPABILITIES FOR DEMANDING SEMI-CON END-USER APPLICATION
Strong Rubber to metal bonding is difficult to achieve even with the more compatible of those two
materials. Many companies claim to have the capability, but few actually understand it and do it
well. When the two materials in question are a low-outgassing viton bonded to titanium, then you’ll
struggle to find anyone willing to get involved in a project at all!
For the past 6 months, Northern Engineering (Sheffield) Ltd (NES) has been working closely with one
of its strategic customers to develop a series of small rubber and titanium components destined for
a demanding semi-con application. Not only are such components made up of two materials that
exhibit natural bonding incompatibilities, once bonded they must attain tight dimensional tolerances
and be strong enough to withstand stringent dynamic and static (destructive) testing. The stakes are
high; failure of these small components could result in £500k of damage per machine!
After the components have been processed, each individual sub-component must be matched to a
full set of recorded measurement data, and carefully cleaned in NES’ clean-room packing
environment prior to shipping.
Throughout this project, NES has been able to develop an intimate (and most likely market leading?)
knowledge of how such a low-outgassing viton compound can work with the unique qualities of
titanium. Much of the value lies in mould-tooling design, surface preparation processes, primer
selection and curing configuration (temperature, pressure and duration). Such insight is likely to
give NES strong credibility in markets that require such strong rubber to titanium bonding (for
example the wider semi-con and Airspace & Defence industries).