Impregnation Sealants

Porosity is a phenomenon that occurs in materials, especially castings, as they change state from liquid to solid during the manufacturing process. Impregnation sealants are a cost effective, permanent solution to the problems that may be encountered as a result of such porosity.

Holes or defects may be created that are too small to be seen by the naked eye and if these are permeated by gas or fluid, significant and costly quality problems can arise, even leading to the failure of the component in service through leaks or surface defects.

Vacuum impregnation sealants is the permanent solution to this problem, filling any voids with a stable yet flexible material that is resistant to attack from heat, oils or chemicals. The process is sub-surface and can be performed on raw materials or the finished machined part, causing no dimensional change or contamination to the component.

Impregnation sealant as a means of treating porosity has been employed since the 1950s, although traditional sealants such as sodium silicate or polyesters have since been replaced by more effective and environmentally friendly methacrylate based products. 

When Ultraseal launched the first methacrylate impregnation sealant called PC504 in the late 1970's, the impregnation industry began a radical change in the methods for sealing leaking porous castings. Prior to Ultraseal PC504, the most common sealants used for impregnation were sodium silicate (water glass), polyester and to a lesser extent, anaerobic resins. These processes were inherently labour intensive, suffered from low productivity, ineffective performance on certain types of porosity and in some cases were hazardous in use. Today, PC504/66 still remains the leading global conventional sealant brand.

As the recognised global leader in providing impregnation equipment and sealant, Ultraseal International continued its long history of being first to market with a series of innovations and refinements. Firstly, Ultraseal introduced the world's first recyclable impregnation sealant - Ultraseal MX2 - which revolutionised the industry by recovering up to 90% of the sealant that otherwise would have been washed away. MX2 has gained significant global approval with major automotive manufacturers and their suppliers, and remains a high performance recycling impregnation sealant offering significant environmental benefits when compared to conventional non-recycling impregnation sealants.

Ultraseal's recycling impregnation sealants are revolutionary, and offer additional qualities to conventional sealant with the added commercial and ecological benefits of being recyclable. Now, excess sealant, instead of simply being consumed in the cold wash tank and lost as effluent, can be recovered and reused in the autoclave, improving the sustainability of the impregnation processes.

Constant refinement of the recycling impregnation sealant technology has led to the creation of Rexeal 100 that has been purposely formulated to meet the ever changing requirements of companies. It brings additional tangible benefits to manufacturers that require the highest possible levels of sealing quality and environmental conformance.