Due to overwhelming customer demand for our quality silicone extrusions, Advanced Materials has been expanding its operations continually over the last few years. This has allowed us to meet the requirements of our customers quickly, efficiently and to the highest standard.
Our team have developed strong relationships with our customers and, by analysing their fundamental needs, we have recognised that quality and lead time are the key metrics in choosing us as their long term silicone supplier.
We are continually investing in the equipment and training necessary to bring all critical processes in-house. This helps us to control quality, limit delays and give our customers confidence we can deliver silicone products that meet the high standards needed for their applications.
We have been able to significantly reduce the turnaround time of our products and keep the manufacturing processes within our quality controlled environment due to our continuous investment plan.
Our goal is to offer our customers a service that is continually improving, quick efficient and easy to use from initial seal design and sample requests, through to full scale production processing and post product support.
Increased Capacity
Our investment plan has been crucial to the success of Advanced Materials. It has allowed us to support the growth of our customers and develop products that are suitable for their applications.
Over the last three years we have made multiple investments.
Post Curing ovens
Updating and doubling the capacity of our post-curing ovens has increased our ability to offer the quickest lead times within the silicone industry. These ovens make us more efficient by decreasing load time and providing full traceability of our products due to electronic logging of data.
Compounding
Making investment in new silicone rubber milling machines means we are able to mix our own compounds on site for maximum efficiency and best quality. This added capacity and quality assurance was essential in keeping up with our customers increasing requirements for our products & in developing new compounds to meet many specifications.
Gaskets
Demand for our gaskets has been steadily increasing, and to keep up with this we have invested in 4 new state of the art joining presses and two injection moulding machines.
Due to the success of our gasket forming processes we are pleased to say we have added four new members to the Advanced Materials team and are now in a position to offer the majority of joining and gasket work within two weeks.
Wire EDM machines
One of our biggest investments was to create an engineering division within advanced materials.
We are able to make 95% of our tooling in house because of our investment in Wire EDM machines and Cad/Cam technology. It was necessary then to train two new team members in the use of these machines and in the intricate design of quality silicone seals.
The decision to create an engineering division in house was made in order to significantly decrease the cost and lead times for newly designed profiles and gaskets.
This was a huge success and demand has been increasing steadily for our customized seal designs.
Website and online ordering system
Our existing profiles are now available to order online making it easier for you to get the existing products you need quickly and allows you to place orders at any time of the day or night. The system is user friendly and has all the information you need to choose the right product for your application. Similarly, the new website is clearer and easier to navigate than the previous version.
New Processes
We are now able to self-adhesive back our products in-house making this a much more cost effective and efficient process.
By developing a machine to attach self-adhesive backing to our products we have been able to decrease the lead-time and control the quality of this process. Since the decision to bring this process in house we have seen increasing demand for our products to be completed with an SAB finish.
We designed the machine ourselves and asked a local manufacturer to construct it.
Having this machine makes sure we have complete control over the SAB process as we are not dependant on a third party. It means we are able to turn these products around quickly and at a competitive price; keeping in line with our customers’ expectations.
Improved Materials
The development of our FGS20 sponges took three years to get right and we are delighted to announce that our food grade sponge has now been fully tested to achieve FDA compliance. Both the FGS20 and FGS20+MPWD (metal powder versions) are FDA compliant.
We developed these materials to give unique compression capabilities; the additional metal powder version was to meet our customers’ requests for an FDA compliant sponge that can be detected if contamination were to occur in food processing or pharmaceutical applications.
These materials have limitations regarding profile complexity and we offer extrusion and joined gaskets as strips, cord and basic profile shapes.
These investments have allowed us to grow steadily along side our customers’ and develop lasting relationships. Our dedicated team offer the know-how to provide a superior service to you with fast product turnaround times to the highest standards.
We’re looking forward to continuing to expand our capabilities to meet the growth and demands of new and existing customers.
Please call 01903 713566 or email enquiries@amsilicones.co.uk to find out how we can help.