Urethane tubes result in a stronger, more durable, and more versatile product than the competition. For this reason, urethane tubes are often a better value than tubes made with other materials that often crack, tear, and swell. Many industries rely on urethane for a variety of applications. Some common uses for urethane tubes include bumpers, protective sleeves, slide over cores for rollers, springs, vibration isolators, and sound dampening applications.
With a long history of outstanding quality, superior product performance, and excellent customer service, PSI is a trusted provider of both custom and standard urethane tubes. All of our urethane tubes are customized to your specifications of diameter, length, hardness, and color. PSI is able to create custom formulations in a variety of sizes to meet your specific needs including FDA dry or wet food approved formulations. PSI produces custom cast tubes from our premium grade urethane to withstand a wide range of operating conditions. For more details on PSI’s custom urethane tubes, watch our short video.
Outstanding Properties of Polyurethane Tubes
Material selection is a key consideration when designing a part or upgrading an existing design – and there is no shortage of material options to choose from. Many industries prefer polyurethane as it offers many advantages over conventional materials like metal, plastic, and rubber. Many OEMs rely on urethane tubes as they offer outstanding properties including:
- Excellent Strength & Impact Resistance: plastics often crack or break under impact loading or stress, especially at higher durometers (hardness). Conversely, polyurethane is not brittle and will maintain its strength and impact resistance over a range of durometers. At PSI, we have a full range of durometers on the “A” scale to 70 on the “D” scale, whereas plastics are much more limited in their durometers.
- Durability and Broad Temperature Range: urethane parts are more durable and have a higher abrasion resistance than conventional materials like plastics. Urethanes can withstand a wide range of operating conditions and environments without sacrificing performance. For example, urethane maintains its excellent mechanical properties in extreme high and low temperatures – something many other materials simply cannot do.
- Resistance to Contaminants, Non-Swelling: compared to other material options, polyurethane tubes are more tolerant of and less likely to degrade when exposed to greases, oils, fuels, salts, solvents, rust, and chemicals – making urethane an excellent option for the manufacturing, automotive, transport, and machinery sectors. Urethane is also able to maintain its shape with little swelling, if any, when submerged in water or oils.
- Shock Absorbing: a shock absorber is any device used for absorbing sudden impulses or shocks; energy dissipates outward, away from the source of the shock impact, so that the object or the object’s internal components are protected and not damaged. Urethane tubes offer a range of shock absorption capabilities as well as the chemical resistance and energy dispersal that other shock-absorbing materials cannot.
- Vibration Dampening: urethane has an outstanding ability to absorb (dampen) vibrational energy. Some vibration isolators are made of multi-layer materials, however, PSI’s products are solid, which means are products often have a faster speed to market than the competition – an advantage for our customers. PSI has a wide range of durometers that can be utilized for both vibration damping and shock absorbing, and our shore “OO” material is excellent for both applications.
- Excellent Mechanical Properties: urethane tends to have a higher load-bearing capacity, greater tear strength, and better compression set compared to its competitors. Polyurethane tubes offer an excellent blend of flexibility and hardness that metals, plastics, and rubbers cannot match.
- Excellent Sound Dampening: polyurethane products offer great noise reduction, resulting in a much quieter operating environment – especially when compared to metal parts.
- Versatility and Customizable: when compared to other materials, urethane offers versatility and reliability that is unmatched. Polyurethane can be formulated to meet the specific needs of each and every application, and custom urethane formulations can be made to meet the desired color, thickness, shape, and durometer (hardness).
Would your team benefit from the durability, strength, and reliability
of polyurethane tubes?
Contact the experts at PSI to learn more about our standard and
custom solutions for urethane tubes.
PSI’s Polyurethane Tubes: Standard and Custom
The team at PSI is the world’s leading supplier of urethane products that are stronger, tougher, more durable, and more versatile than any conventional elastomers and plastics available today. Urethanes are simply a better value than parts made with other materials that often crack, break, tear, swell, deteriorate, and abrade. With a long history of outstanding quality, superior product performance and excellent customer service, PSI is a trusted provider of both custom and standard urethane tubes.
The professionals at PSI specialize in custom urethane products. We can customize tubes to your specifications of diameter, length, hardness and color. Additionally, when specialty parts are needed, we can produce dual durometer polyurethane tubes and custom shapes. Our in-house machining capabilities can also provide tight tolerances and a ground finish for your polyurethane tubing. Custom urethane tubes are available with the following specifications:
- Diameter and length
- Durometer (hardness) range: 20 Shore A to 70 Shore D
- Variety of colors
- FDA dry or wet food approved
- Cost effective prototypes
- Dual durometer
- Ground finish
- Custom contours on ID and/or OD surfaces
We have the ability to take our existing molds and customize tubes specific to your requirements. Visit our website for a list of ID and OD dimensions for our in-house molds. Note that all ID’s listed have an “On Mandrel” tolerance, which means we pour them exactly. In its relaxed state, the ID will shrink down and will measure smaller than the dimension it was poured. Since polyurethane is an elastomer, it will stretch back out to the requested ID and will be a tight fit.
Not sure what kind of polyurethane is best for your application? No worries – our team specializes in custom urethane products and we are happy to guide you through the process of creating a custom urethane formulation that is tailored to your specific needs.
About PSI Urethanes
Since 1966, through our own independent research and activity in the Polyurethane Manufacturers Association, PSI Urethanes has stayed on the leading edge of urethane technology – including developing advances in new materials, comprehensive designs, and processing technologies. Today we are among the most respected and trusted suppliers of custom urethane products.
We operate from our 45,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Austin, Texas, which houses an extensive stock of polyurethane products. Our fully equipped manufacturing facility includes a versatile range of processing machinery, which allows us to work on unique, one-of-a-kind projects, as well as high volume components. Our in-house engineering, tooling, and custom mold shop, produces custom and stock production orders with exceptionally fast turn-around times. From conception to prototyping, to final production runs, our technical representatives and design engineers will work closely with your staff to meet your critical tolerances and specifications. You are guaranteed to receive experienced, professional, and personalized service from the first contact through your on-time delivery, with complete confidentiality and dedication to protecting your good name.
PSI Urethanes specializes in custom urethane products. Contact us today to see how we can help with your next project, or give us a call at 1-800-888-5156.