SEPCO Sealing Equipment Products Co

10/13/2026

Tuesday Tip 🔧

Seal faces that look like they ran dry may have been boiling.

When seal chamber pressure drops below the fluid's v***r pressure at chamber temperature, the fluid flashes as it crosses the faces. You get chipped edges, heat checking and a seal that pops and spits.

Check your margin at the temperature you actually measured, not the design temperature. Last week's tip shows how to get an honest reading.

10/12/2026

Passed hydrotest, leaking two days later? The gasket probably didn't fail. The bolts lost their load.

Tighten in passes using a cross pattern, then finish with circular passes at full torque until no nut turns. The full sequence is on the graphic. Save it for your next shutdown.

10/09/2026

Only 10% of bearings ever make it to their L10 life. More than half the failures come down to one thing: contaminated oil.

Not overload. Not misalignment. Dirt and water getting into the housing — and if you didn't pour dirty oil in, it came past a failed seal.

The EXP Bearing Isolator is true non-contact. Dual expellers fling contamination away from the bearing, two internal coalescing O-rings handle v***r, and nothing in it touches your shaft. It splits for installation, so the equipment stays together.

Data sheet here 👇
https://bit.ly/4AW0cpS

This week's Friday Featured Product — follow along for a new one each week.

10/08/2026

A hose that fails in a fire doesn't just stop working — it feeds the fire.

That's why firesleeve standards are written in minutes rather than pass or fail.

Pyrosleeve is silicone-coated braided glass, made at our plant in Alabaster. Tested to 1,900°F for 15 to 20 minutes, 9,500 cycles on the Wyzenbeck abrasion test, and self-extinguishing. Standard sizes from 5/16" to 3-1/2" ID.

Most of it ends up protecting lines from rubbing on a bracket rather than from flame. Both failures end the same way.

10/07/2026

Torque is not clamp load — and that's why flanges leak at the correct torque.

Only part of what you put into a bolt becomes stretch, and stretch is what actually seals the gasket. The rest goes into friction under the nut and in the threads.

So a dry, rusty bolt and a clean lubricated one, pulled to exactly the same number, give you two different joints. The dry one is the loose one.

If the torque table assumed lubricated threads, use lubricated threads.

10/06/2026

Using an infrared gun to check seal chamber temperature? On bare stainless, you're probably reading low.

Shiny metal doesn't emit much infrared — it reflects. So the gun is picking up the room as much as the gland, and the error always runs the same direction: it reads cooler than reality.

Fix is a strip of flat black electrical tape stuck to the gland. Let it warm up, shoot the tape. Leave it there and you've got the same spot to check every time.

10/05/2026

More seals die on Monday morning than on Friday afternoon.

A pump that sat all weekend isn't the same pump that shut down. Solids have settled in the seal chamber, the flush line has gone stagnant, and if you're on caustic or brine, crystals have formed right on the faces. The first revolution drags everything through them.

Before you hit the start button: check that flush is actually flowing — at the gauge, not the valve handle. Turn the shaft by hand if you can.

If one pump keeps eating seals, look at what happens when it's off, not when it's running.

10/02/2026

Most high-temperature valve packing fails the same way. The lubricants and binders cook out, the set shrinks, what's left turns brittle, and the valve starts weeping no matter how far you run the gland down.

ML2001W doesn't have that problem, because it doesn't have binders. It's pure homogeneous graphite on an Inconel wire carrier — rated to 4,500 psi and 1,250°F.

Full specs 👇
https://bit.ly/3W09sZM

This week's Friday Featured Product — follow along for a new one each week.

ML2001W flexible graphite packing with Inconel wire inserted.

10/01/2026

Most bearings don't fail from being overloaded. They fail because something got into the housing.

Water and dirt work past a worn lip seal, break down the lubricant, and the bearing goes not long after. It gets written up as a bearing failure, a new bearing goes in, and six months later you're doing it again.

If one position keeps eating bearings, the bearing isn't the problem.

09/29/2026

Tuesday tip for chemical processors 🧪

When a mechanical seal fails early, check the elastomer before the faces.

Viton covers most acids and hydrocarbons but won't survive hot amines. EPR handles amines, caustics, and steam but breaks down in anything petroleum-based — including standard install lubricants.

If the same pump keeps eating seals, pull the O-ring and look at it. Swelling or hardening tells you the answer before the faces do.