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Engineering Excellence

Advanced technology helps our engineers excel.

By Rick Hudson

As I see it, running a successful company really only requires two basic things. First, you have to hire talented professionals. As cliché as it might sound, good people really are the most valuable resource any company can have. And second, you must make sure the pros you’ve enlisted have the tools they need to excel on a daily basis. I’m proud to say that, here at RL Hudson and Company, we do both. Our personnel input the inspiration that makes automation worthwhile.

Our engineering department is a great example. Director of Engineering Frank Horn heads up a ten-person team at our Broken Arrow headquarters. We also have one engineer in our Taiwan office, as well as one consulting engineer (the shaft seal expert, Dr. Les Horve) and an in-house compound development chemist (Sam Burgess). Frank and his teammates are adept in a variety of sophisticated engineering technologies. What technologies, you ask? Let me give you an overview of some of the marvelous tools our engineers have at their disposal.

3-D SOLID MODELING For any company that’s serious about design, Pro/ENGINEER® is pretty much a given. When it comes to computer-aided design, it is the scale against which all other programs are judged. We currently utilize Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire, the most versatile parametric solid modeling software on the market today. Pro/E allows our engineers to quickly and accurately model new design concepts. Pro/E also allows us to work in collaboration with our customers’ engineering departments, and even to work with drawings created using other software or different versions of Pro/E. Figure 1 shows an example of a part design generated by our engineers using Pro/E.

FINITE ELEMENT ANALYSIS Our engineers aren’t content to simply design a great product, however. They also want to test how a given design will function in application variables, and Abaqus® Finite Element Analysis (FEA) software allows them to do just that. FEA takes the designs completed in Pro/ENGINEER and creates three-dimensional simulations of those parts working in real-world conditions. Our FEA software lets us do fully non-linear analysis, which is required for rubber and which is the standard for rubber FEA. Also, we validate our results by getting realistic material properties “specific to the application” in our materials lab. Use of FEA allows us to stress-test a design and analyze performance prior to prototyping, which in turn saves our customers both time and money. Figure 2 shows an example of a Pro/E-generated design being stress-tested using our FEA program.

MOLD FLOW ANALYSIS Once designed and stress-tested, a part must still be molded. We use a mold flow analysis (MFA) program to spotlight any potential molding glitches that might arise. We use Pro/ENGINEER Plastic Advisor™, an MFA program from C-Mold, the leader in mold flow technology. Plastic Advisor works within Pro/ENGINEER to predict how a material will flow into a mold cavity under variable conditions, such as temperature, pressure, and gate and runner size and location. This ability to anticipate molding performance (and, if need be, make design changes to eliminate potential problems) saves our customers time that might otherwise be lost awaiting factory evaluation of a design. Figure 3 shows an example of a design being mock-molded using our MFA program.

DESIGN ASSISTANCE As you can see, the engineers here at RL Hudson and Company do not lack for good technology. And good technology in the hands of smart, creative people inevitably yields amazing results. Just ask any company for whom we’ve designed a part; I think they will tell you what we offer in terms of both problem solving and precision. If you have a design project that would benefit from our capabilities, do not hesitate to call us at 1-800-722-6766. We’ll be glad to help!

Of course, not all applications require a custom-designed part; sometimes all you need is an O-ring. Still, O-ring applications can be tricky, so our engineers have devised a handy web-based program to help us (and you) quickly design O-ring applications. To use the program, all you have to do is select your type of application, be it static or dynamic. Choose a design style (for example, reciprocating, floating, or rotary for dynamic applications) and the gland orientation (male or female), then enter the pertinent dimensions and operational characteristics. Our program then calculates your O-ring information. You can access our O-Ring Calculator by visiting us on the web at www.rlhudson.com. While you’re there, be sure to check out all of the other useful features we offer, including our detailed Material Profiles and Interactive Chemical Compatibility Guide.