A medical device OEM's LSR gasket in volume.

A medical device OEM produces a hand-held diagnostic device. It has a sealed enclosure with a silicone gasket around the perimeter — the gasket keeps dust and moisture out during clinical use and cleaning.

The gasket had been running on compression tooling for two years. It worked, but every part needed hand-trimming on the sealing lip because the parting line landed just at the edge of the sealing face. A skilled operator could produce good parts, but the process wasn't scaling — annual volumes had doubled, and hand-trim was becoming the bottleneck.

Cosmetic acceptance was tightening too. The device had been through a design revision that made the gasket more visible in use. What had been acceptable in year one wasn't acceptable in year three.

LSR tooling investment was several times the compression tool cost. Per-part cost dropped once the trim operation was eliminated. The bottleneck — hand-trim capacity — went away entirely, freeing capacity for other programmes.

The medical documentation shifted: LSR batch traceability was simpler to record than the compression-plus-trim process, because the operator step disappeared. The device history file benefits went beyond just the trim savings.

For this customer, LSR was the right answer once annual volumes had grown past their earlier threshold. Two years earlier, compression had been correct. Neither decision was wrong for its time.

The commercial shapes described in our project records are examples of what's worked, not prices we're quoting today. Every programme sizes differently based on part geometry, annual volume, material family and paperwork requirements.

For a first conversation about whether we'd be the right supplier for your part, send a drawing or a sample with your rough annual volume. That's enough to know if the fit is real.