Specialty Silicone Products (SSP) provides material selection and design assistance, converting and fabricating advice, and technical education and training. These are three great reasons to make us your strategic supplier, but did you know that SSP also provides technical reports, research and development, and creative ways to increase production yields? By combining these value-added services with our materials and products, your business can benefit.
Technical Reports
SSP publishes detailed technical information about our materials right on our website. This data is always available for download, and you can easily view the PDFs that we provide in your browser. Of course, you can also save, print, and share this information with colleagues. Along with technical data sheets (TDS) and safety data sheets (SDS), you’ll find third-party testing reports. Depending on the type of material, these reports may include:
- EMI Shielding Effectiveness
- Outgassing
- Compression Deflection
- Salt Spray Testing
- USP Class VI Compliance
In addition, SSP offers a Certificate of Analysis (COA) with each batch. Unlike a Certificate of Conformance (COC), a COA reports the test results for a specific batch. By contrast, a COC simply attests to a batch’s compliance with specifications. SSP can provide COCs if you need them, but customers who need proof that the materials they buy are truly spec-grade silicones ask for COAs instead. SSP’s ability to provide this information is part of what makes us a trusted supplier to the defense, aerospace, and medical industries.
Research and Development
When you partner with Specialty Silicone Products (SSP), you’ll gain access to more than just our manufacturing capabilities. Along with material selection and design assistance, you can leverage our research and development (R&D) resources. In an industry where the big players are huge multinational corporations, SSP is an 80-person company with an R&D team that represents a significant percentage of our staff.
Led by Dr. Sarah Lewis, SSP’s R&D team includes Amelia Berry, Product Development Chemist, and Taylor Smith, Product Development Engineer, and Ryan Davidson-Romanoff, New Product Specialist. The work that Sarah’s team performs enables SSP to formulate new products, reformulate existing products, and develop offsets to non-SSP materials at rapid speeds. For example, SSP has developed military-grade materials in less than a month and developed flame-retardant alternatives to discontinued GORE EMI shielding in less than six months.
Creative Ways to Increase Production Yields
Specialized elastomers like EMI/RFI silicones and military and aerospace silicones aren’t commodity materials. To control costs, it’s critical to minimize waste and maximize material yields. Whether you buy our silicones for fabrication, or whether you buy fabricated products like EMI gaskets and EMI O-rings from us instead, SSP continuously looks for ways to increase production yields. This helps give you a competitive edge and supports your profitability.
For example, some SSP customers need large gaskets that resemble a picture frame. With EMI silicone sheets, cutting out an empty section in the middle can result in significant waste. That’s why SSP can mold large frame gaskets instead – and with benefits that go beyond material utilization. Unlike frame gaskets made of cut and bonded strips, molded gaskets are a single piece. This reduces the risk of leaking that’s associated with the corners of bonded gaskets.
For customers who buy our materials instead of our fabricated products, SSP also offer ways to reduce waste. For example, the EMI sheets that we supply are available in standard thicknesses of .032, .062, and .093 inches. They’re also available in custom thicknesses if you need them. In addition, SSP supplies rolls of EMI silicones in standard widths from 1 to 15 inches, and in custom widths as well. We also offer cut lengths from 1-ft. to 25-ft.
Are you looking for a strategic supplier? To learn more about the value we provide, contact SSP.
