The increasing use of automatic equipment for the feeding and installation of o-rings requires greater emphasis on the dimensional quality of the o-ring and its packaging. With automatic installation, there are two environments that must be addressed: the environment of the application, and the environment of the automatic assembly process. Each of these applications will require separate dimensional and material considerations. Of course, the installation considerations must always remain secondary to the requirements of the application environment.
Some of the factors that must be considered when automatically installing o-rings are distortion, coating, and foreign matter. Failure to consider one of these factors may cause an unacceptable frequency of downtime.