Silicone Rubber – Good Indoors and Outdoors
You need only glance around this website to realise there are plenty of ways you can use silicone rubber parts. You can buy tubing for many applications including those in medical settings. You can buy all kinds of washers, both in regular sizes and in bespoke designs. You can buy numerous gaskets and profiles made from one piece of silicone or several. The possibilities are, well… endless, as you can see.
Versatility is a key feature of many silicone rubber applications. It is this versatility that makes the items ideal for use in both indoor and outdoor situations.
Indoor applications
The medical industry has discovered many ways to use silicone rubber parts. Its inert nature makes it the perfect choice for tubes and applications such as catheters and other materials that enter the body. It is the safest choice as its smooth and non-pitted nature makes it far less likely to experience issues with bacterial growth. It can also be made to withstand steam sterilisation processes, so that it can be reused.
You can also find plenty of silicone rubber baking items in use. Silicone rubber withstands extremes of temperature well and can be formulated to provide an even better degree of safety when used in high temperatures. Silicone rubber will also move around rather than supplying a rigid performance. This means we can take the baking mould out of the oven and move it around to release whatever we have cooked inside it.
Outdoor applications
Perhaps the best example of a silicone rubber feature that comes into its own outdoors relates to its weather resistant properties. It does not fade, crack, or otherwise age quickly as regular rubber items may do.
It may be used for rubber washers between parts of an item of garden furniture – perhaps a chair or table. You might also find silicone rubber washers and other parts used in the creation of a barbecue.
Another far-removed example other than this would involve using silicone rubber for the seals around the doors of an aeroplane. It would be an understatement to say that these are a vital part of the plane, as it flies many thousands of feet in the air. Failure of any rubber washers or seals could be catastrophic, and so the best materials are used in all these instances.
How can you use silicone rubber?
Since you already found us, we think you probably already have an idea of how you would like to use your selected silicone rubber parts. You can see that the individual properties of one part can vary markedly when compared to another part. However, when you have a specific role in mind – whether for use indoors or outdoors – it is best to seek professional advice. By consulting with a team of experts used to working with this type of rubber, it becomes far easier to find the best formulation. This in turn will always lead to the best performance that is destined to last the longest.