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Total service in cartridge seals
A custom-designed cartridge seal from James Walker will provide the total solution to your rotary shaft sealing problems, particularly where standard methods and products are unlikely to succeed.
Our service includes all, or any number, of the following operations - undertaken in close liaison with your engineering staff:
Design and manufacture
Sealing elements: these are carefully selected from our full family of rotary sealing products to meet precisely your operational parameters. We frequently specify our Walkersele® radial lip seals, other rotary seals, gland packings or 'O' rings. However, we will custom design and produce sealing elements specifically for your application, where this is necessary.
Cartridges: these are designed and precision-machined to match the pressure rating of the sealing application. They will provide full housing support for the sealing element/s under all operational conditions.
Why OEMs fit our cartridge seals
Plant manufacturers often want to concentrate on their core businesses - eg, gearbox, pump or bearing manufacture - and leave the highly specialised area of fluid sealing technology to an acknowledged expert such as James Walker.
In close liaison with the OEM's design and production engineering staff, we custom design, prototype and test a fluid sealing system to meet their needs. The bolt-on cartridge seals we supply, arrive as complete units ready to be installed at plant assembly stage. We therefore relieve our customer of the sealing system design and specification, and seal housing manufacture.
Why plant operators fit our cartridge seals
Operators usually need their rotary sealing systems upgraded to:
We will custom design and supply a cartridge-based system that replaces the original sealing system. In this case our system will run reliably and maintenance free for far longer, and provide higher sealing integrity.
A split-type cartridge is the best solution for most existing plant, as this can be readily installed without stripping down shafts and housings to gain access.
Older plants with worn shafts
These often suffer from decades of sealing abrasion, but can be brought back to efficient operation with a customised bolt-on cartridge unit.
We will design and supply an easily installed split-type cartridge unit that relocates the sealing elements over unworn sections of the shaft. This extends the life of the plant and overcomes the need to shut down for time-consuming reconditioning or costly shaft replacement.
Shaft with high radial movement
This problem is often created by bearings that are worn or out of alignment. Such shafts can be effectively sealed using our custom-designed cartridges that contain sealing elements in 'floating' housings.
Typical applications
Dredge pump seals
Problem: To protect bearings on dredge pumps from highly abrasive slurry.
Solution: Custom manufactured cartridge unit containing three specially designed lip seals of 330mm ID moulded in a James Walker elastomeric compound for greatly extended sealing life in abrasive conditions.
Blast furnace flow gate paddle seals
Problem: To overcome unacceptable wear on the shaft that rotates a paddle to control the high-volume, low-pressure flow of gases. The original compression packing system no longer sealed on the worn shaft.
Solution: A custom-designed fully-split cartridge seal, bolted straight onto the plant without removal of shaft or housings. The cartridge positions the sealing lips of two Walkersele® OSJ (On-Site Joining) rotary lip seals on an undamaged section of the shaft to increase its working life. 
Long-term sealing for de-waxer filter
Problem: To develop a new sealing system to control volatile solvent emissions from six rotary de-waxer filters on the lubrication oil plant at a major refinery. Customer needed seals to run for four to six years between turnarounds. Glands on existing system had to be repacked every few months.
Solution: Six custom-designed cartridge units that have run problem-free for over 12 years. These have 'floating' gland housings containing four rings of Aquagraf compression packing. The floating glands effectively absorb misalignment created by differential thermal movement during the process cycle and bearing/shaft wear.
How supplied
Our customised cartridge seals are usually designed, manufactured and supplied to solve a specific problem - although we do have standard cartridge components that may be suitable.
Please let us know the full extent of your sealing problem, including shaft sizes, fluid media involved, chemical and particulate content, other operational parameters, and seal lifetime expectancy. We will assess the extent of the problem and create the optimum solution based on a customised cartridge seal.
Click here to download a pdf of our brochure (2580KB)
