Featured Story – Teadit: Leading R&D for critical process sealing solutions

Teadit quickly realized the market was not just focused on lower pricing, but lower total cost of ownership. “If we can provide a better, longer lasting solution with quality service, it outweighs product price,” said Day. “We are always looking to elevate Teadit in the eyes of our customers.”

Teadit is also recognized as one of the leading manufacturers of standard pipe size and pressure class spiral wound gaskets. “To my knowledge, we are the only global manufacturer that does the level of product evaluation and testing that we do for the standard size and class range. This allows us to ensure that all the standards that we put forth meet or exceed the new performance specifications mandated,” said Day.

Teadit’s flagship packing product, style 2236, was born from the desire to create a better product for the market. “We saw an opportunity to make things simpler for our customers – a single material making up a complete packing set providing the best emissions results at that time. The simplest solution for the best results,” said Day. “Our customers are the driving force behind our advanced testing capabilities and market-driven R&D initiatives.”

The Teadit Group has robust in-house testing capabilities in all the regions that it serves. This testing includes compression and leakage monitoring for metal gaskets, ranging from ½” to 18-inches in size, across multiple pressure classes. “This gives us the ability to not only measure how good our gaskets are, but measure the effectiveness of process improvements we develop,” said Day. “When we first started testing, we saw that we were, what I consider, in the middle of the road. We did things about as well as everybody else and in about the same way.”

Teadit then started looking at incorporating improvements into different aspects of the gaskets based on a variety of variables that affected ultimate sealing ability. They found that those variables sometime fit together in different ways, to produce different results. “We finally got the right combination that would enable the parts to perform very well, but this testing dictated a lot of tweaking of our processes,” commented Day. “We’re testing up to fifty gaskets per week in our facilities to make sure that we can validate our performance and continue to look for opportunities to improve performance. It gives us a very clear indicator of where we are and where we need to be.”

Day stands behind the company’s testing procedures. “This evaluation process is something nobody else is doing, but everyone should be. We have reached a critical point where we want to continue to differentiate ourselves in the market. We are a high quality, high volume production manufacturer with the ability to really dictate the future of the sealing products industry.”

In-house testing is critical to Teadit, because it is one of their major differentiators from competing manufacturers. “As long as we remain focused on the fact that it is all about quality, we will forge ahead. We must be able to test our product; go out into the shop, make it faster, and lower costs. It is all about performance, in everything that we do. In-house testing gives us the ability to experiment with production efficiencies, we put a lot of emphasis into and behind our testing, and we do it well,” stated Day.

Typical gasket testing is conducted in two phases – destructive, and then performance. The first phase involves conducting a destructive test, where multiple pieces are destroyed, to ensure full compliance to specification construction requirements. In the second phase, leakage tests and compression tests are performed to ensure the specification requirements are met per ASME B16.20 (2017). Testing lasts approximately four hours from start to finish. For this evaluation, Teadit has logged data now for the last four years, which gives operators a backlog of case studies to extract information from if they do ever encounter a problem.

Day mentioned the group has two testing rigs in North America, two in Brazil, and one in India. “We can conduct twenty gasket tests per week here – and can do twenty in Brazil, and ten in India. We are testing a wide range of sizes to ensure consistency. We want to make sure that wherever we are producing a product, it holds the same caliber of performance regardless of the manufacturing site. Everyone is starting to demand this in the industry – quality control across the globe,” said Day.

When asked about the future of the industry, Day is hopeful for future generations. He maintains that it is not difficult to produce great quality products over lower quality items. “With genuine and sincere effort, the price to produce and the price to procure can both be about the same, it is almost negligent to supply to the market without proven quality gaskets and packing these days,” said Day. “If we stop emissions, we’re stopping the loss of product, right? It’s the product that’s going in the air rather than going through the piping. We need refineries and industry to thrive, but I also want this world to be around for my grandkids to enjoy. We get too caught up in our day-to-day routine to really worry about this thing called a ‘carbon footprint’, but it’s important,” commented Day. “It’s important for our future and I want to make a difference. That is what is cool about being part of a company like Teadit, they help me accomplish this!”