Okay Kids, Let’s Play the Mechanical Seal Game. To play this game we need one industrial plant. A Paper Mill, Oil Refinery, Thermo-electric Power Plant, Pharmaceutical/Chemical Plant, or Municipal Water plant will do. Next we need a few hundred pumps. We’ll want all the major mechanical seal manufacturers (you already know who they are), and maybe a regional seal supply shop on hand. And, it’s also a good idea to have a couple of Seal-less Pump distributors in the vicinity. Toss in a recent corporate merger and a few memos pledging more production with less people. Now you have all the elements and pieces to begin playing...”The Mechanical Seal Game”.

Start by aligning yourself with one of the major national seal companies. Hold joint corporate meetings and commit to use only their seals in all your pumps, wherever possible. After a frustrating 24 to 36-months, kick-out this seal supplier and bring in another major national seal company who just recently swallowed-up it’s competitor and has a disjointed line of un-matching seals and a fractured corporate philosophy. Our goal here is to get about 5 to 8 years of mechanical seal life on our cooling tower re-circulating pumps, transfer pumps, and process pumps. This was the promise of the corporate bigwigs when they assigned us our very own inhouse seal technician and said we were working toward a common goal. Are we having fun yet?

After another 24 to 36-months of exchanging blame and pointing fingers, kick them out and move on to either another national seal company or possibly one of the regional seal houses. It’s important to note that the regional seal manufacturer got it’s start from a cancelled distributor or possibly disgruntled workers who made and built one of major seal companies, and then were downsized in the merger. This new alliance begins with a round of seal seminars, and a new and REALLY motivated inhouse seal technician. We’re still trying to get about 5 to 8 years of seal life on the cooling tower water pumps, and we know it’s possible because we can get this type of seal life on the radiator water pump of the family car, and on the freon compressor of the fridge. Even the new seal literature says the seal faces are rated for 40,000 operating hours. But for some reason we can’t seem to get more than a few weeks or months. Is the blur coming into focus?

By now we’ve rotated the maintenance engineer out of the department (and he’s glad to leave), and the mechanical seal bigwigs don’t come around anymore. The purchasing agent is making decisions based on price, when suddenly a Seal-less Pump distributor comes onto the scene. His pumps don’t use seals, and the purchasing agent is tired of buying cheap seals. The sales agent can’t brag on his price, or the efficiency of his pumps, or the fact that they generate more heat than they can remove from the process, and they take larger motors, BUT THEY DON’T USE MECHANICAL SEALS. God Bless the Seal-less Pump.