Introduction

A Littlejohn Ltd is a well-established silicone elastomer specialist. With around 50 years of practical experience of material design and processing we have a very sound base to call on.

We are based in Llandow, South Wales serving the UK and overseas customers.

Whilst our main area of operation is in customer design of materials to meet specified requirements in HCR (Solid, High Consistency Rubber), we also supply bases, liquid silicone elastomers (LSR’s) and additives.

Our aim is to supply our customers with a material ready for final conversion to finished product (via vulcanisation) with no need for further modification, except for blank preparation. The products are supplied tested and released, with full traceability certificate, taking away many of the converter’s concerns.

We take great care, working closely with customers, to define all the needs of the material concerned. This means using a truly holistic approach covering all needs from the practicalities of conversion processing to meeting the requirements of technically defined property profiles through, for example, detailed specifications, of which we have wide knowledge.

The typical steps we take can be summarised:

  1. Customer request – Look, listen, discuss if necessary
  2. Identify the optimum material approach
  3. Test the proposed material – this may involve some processing/conversion trials or measuring physical properties and comparing to identified requirement.

For this latter part, we are able to replicate conversion processes via small scale equipment- eg. Extrusion and vulcanising as a continuous process plus moulding up to quite large dimension. A customer’s mould may be used at a later stage of trials.

Physical testing requires a wide range of equipment, and we have an extensive laboratory set up. We are able to test all the ‘standard’ physical requirements on vulcanised test samples plus study rheometry to determine processability. Colour matching is often required as part of a specification and this can be accommodated with use of suitable pigments. A colour standard can be requested (eg. RAL series) or colour can be matched to a sample.

The final stage of customer approval may need trial runs of production for the end user’s ultimate acceptance.

By the way, we do not apply a minimum order quantity, but recognise this can appear very costly.

On-going customer service is considered as a highly important part of our functions. If a customer finds a need to make a change, or has concerns over a performance property, this is attended to immediately. The observations are evaluated with a ‘First Response’ a priority. As a back-up to that we hold reference samples of all batches produced for at least the shelf life of the batch. This assists the first response as materials are readily at hand.

Silicone Rubber is very versatile whilst offering a very different set of properties when compared to organic elastomers. We see silicone rubber finished parts performing well in a wide range of applications, eg:

  • Medical
  • Pharmaceutical
  • Industrial (eg. Hydraulics and oil seals)
  • Food Contact Applications
  • Aerospace
  • Automotive etc…

And the physical requirements can be widely modified eg.

Hardness – Very soft to very hard (<10-90 Shore A)

Colour – Transparent to Intense Black

Temperature Range – -80 (or 115 depending on test) to +300°C

Resilient to damping

Conductivity – Electrical and Heat

Use of speciality additives to modify particular requirements eg. X-ray detectability, surface friction etc.

Get in Touch

Our extensive customer base is testament to the high quality service we provide so if you are in need of a company who can provide an express response to your silicone custom compounding requirements.

Please do not hesitate to contact us by completing the online form with your query and details or simply call the number at the top of the page; we look forward to hearing from you and providing all your silicone rubber requirements.

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