Most custom enquiries arrive the same way: one photo of a worn part on a workbench, and the question "can you make this?"
The honest answer is almost always "probably, but not from this photo". A photograph shows the shape. A price depends on things a photograph cannot carry.
The part itself beats every document
If you still have the old one, send it. A used part carries information no drawing ever includes: where the wall thickness changes, how the bead sits, which face took the load, where it failed first. A sample also settles the question a drawing usually leaves open — which of its dimensions actually matter.
Send it even if it is torn. The failure is information too.
If there is no part, send a drawing — and say which dimension is critical
A drawing with dimensions is the next best thing. But a part has many dimensions and usually only two or three decide whether it works: the diameter that has to seal, the face that has to seat, the feature that has to clear something else.
Mark those. A shop that does not know which dimension is critical will hold all of them to the same tolerance, which is the expensive way to do it, or hold the wrong one to the tight tolerance, which is the way that fails on the bench.
Say how many, per order and per year
Quantity changes the answer more than any other input, because a moulded part is made in a tool and the tool is paid for once. A hundred pieces and fifty thousand pieces are not the same part commercially, even when they are identical technically.
You do not need a firm forecast. A range is enough — "a few hundred to start, maybe a few thousand a year if it works" tells a supplier what they need to know.
Say where it sits and what it touches
Compound choice follows the environment, not the shape. Oil, brake fluid, hot air, ozone and sunlight, cold starts — each pushes the answer towards a different rubber family. NBR, EPDM and Neoprene behave differently in each of them, and picking one from a photo is guessing with your money.
We wrote up the differences in the material guide. You do not have to choose the compound yourself — you have to describe the conditions well enough that someone can.
What we cannot tell you from a photo
- Whether it will seal. That is a function of the compound, the tool and the mating parts, and it is settled by a sample in your hand, not by correspondence.
- A price. Without quantity and the critical dimensions, any figure would be invented, and an invented figure is worse than a delay.
- Whether the old part failed because of the rubber. Sometimes the rubber is the symptom and the housing or the installation is the cause.
The practical version
Put these in the first message and you will usually get a real answer instead of three rounds of questions:
- The part, or a drawing with the critical dimensions marked
- Quantity per order, and roughly per year
- Where it works and what it touches
- What went wrong with the one you have now
That is it. If something is missing we will ask, but every round trip costs a day.
What we supply from the catalogue is air brake chamber diaphragms; custom work is a separate route, described on the custom rubber page. Either way you can reach a named person through contact — the first reply is not automated.