Are you looking for a stronger, tougher, and more reliable alternative to rubber and plastics? If you work in industrial spaces and are looking for high-performance products and components, then urethane rods and bars might just be the solution for you. Capable of withstanding heavy-duty use, wear, tear, and abrasion, polyurethane bars and rods are highly versatile products able to be used in a wide range of applications.
With plenty of sizes and lengths to choose from, these tools also come in various colors and hardness levels to meet your standards (i.e., 70A, 80A, 90A). Read on below for your guide to using urethane rods and bar stock, and to find out how they can help your business and industrial work.
What is Urethane?
Urethane or polyurethane, is sometimes referred to as a hybrid product due to its versatility; it offers the durability and toughness of metal while having the elasticity of rubber. However, it is not made of either of these things; instead, urethane is made from natural compounds known as isocyanate and polyol, which are bonded by carbamate to make them strong. These are just the starting blocks – polyurethane can be made to be more complex using a wide range of materials.
As it can have so many chemical variations, polyurethane can be created and used for a nearly unlimited number of applications. It can be made into both flexible and rigid foams, adhesives, bumpers, coatings, varnishes, and more, as well as fibers like spandex. With that said, foam is the most common application, accounting for 67% of the polyurethane produced in 2016.
Urethane has a wide range of hardness levels, from soft and flexible to as solid as a rock. The hardness is measured by durometers. The lower the number, the softer the material; low durometer readings correspond to low compression set characteristics.
Urethane’s versatility allows users to replace plastic, rubber, and even metal in their daily applications. It has superior physical properties along with excellent abrasion resistance, meaning polyurethane products can last longer and help to reduce production and maintenance costs.
Many companies rely on polyurethane to maintain their budget, cut production time, and reduce their operations downtime, while paying a fraction of the cost of other materials. This resilient and tough material is also a great choice if you’re looking to outperform rubber or steel because it can be molded into any shape you need while retaining the characteristics of those other two materials.
Additionally, polyurethanes can lessen noise and control shock and vibration in most environments. All of these great benefits are rolled into one material. You can create custom molded parts from polyurethane to work in any capacity you need. Urethane is the best of both worlds – versatility that meets the highest standards in the industry.
What Are Urethane Rods?
Urethane rods are made from thermoset polymer, a material that can retain its flexibility, shape, and resilience. Once formed, the rods can retain these physical properties under tension, compression, or stress, but can be molded into any shape, hardness, or size, making them highly versatile. Urethane rods also possess better aging, tear, and abrasion resistance compared to other materials.
The material also offers a higher load capacity, without displaying any deformation issues. Furthermore, polyurethane rods will provide better impact resistance, elastic memory, and wear properties compared to other kinds of plastics. Polyurethane rods come in a wide range of options, such as:
- Standard round rod stock sizes
- Custom round rod stock sizes
- A range between 40A–65D durometers
- Various colors, sizes, and lengths
How Are They Used?
Urethane rods are often used as an alternative to nylon or plastic components to provide an upgraded function. They also go beyond the standard color of black. Depending on your needs, you can get a urethane rod that can offer better resistance to oil, abrasion, weather, and wear. These can be made to be four times stronger than nylon, allowing them to last longer through various applications.
Custom Urethane Rods
Polyurethane rods can be custom-made into versatile shapes and different sizes for manufacturing high-performance products. You can find a great range of customization options for urethane rods, including:
- Size
- Shape
- Length
- Color
- Diameter
- Hardness
Depending on your needs, you may specify a set of parameters and dimensions to ensure that the end product will meet your requirements. With a long history of superior performance, outstanding quality, and personal customer service, you can count on Uniflex to deliver all your custom urethane rods. You can be confident that our urethane rods will provide the following benefits:
- Long lasting
- Crack resistant
- Abrasion resistant
- Oil resistant
- Durable
- No tooling costs
- Custom diameter
What Are High-Performance Rod Stocks?
Uniflex offers high-performance urethane rod stock as well, which you can use for all your heavy-duty applications. These provide an upgrade over traditional materials and can perform well under load and compression. As these are much stronger than plastic and nylon, they won’t crack.
High performance urethane rod stock is as easy to use as plastic, but offers a wider variety of hardness options. Polyurethane is often the preferred choice over many other materials and can be adjusted to a particular level of hardness to match the needs of your projects. Furthermore, it can be manufactured with UV protection, as well as oil and heat resistance, making it the perfect choice for different industries, such as:
- Food and Service
- Manufacturing
- Military
- Marine
- Aviation
- Aerospace
- And more
What is Urethane Bar Stock?
Just like polyurethane rod stocks, bar stock is a versatile product that is well suited for various applications and can be made custom in low volumes to be used as stops, bushings, or bumpers. Urethane bar stock can also help ease machining and grinding applications through specialized formulations. Additionally, you can have your urethane bar stock created with specific characteristics, such as:
- Low compression
- High-temperature formulation
- Oil resistant
- Abrasion resistant
- Custom length and diameter
- Custom colors
- Custom hardness
- And more
At Uniflex, we offer a wide range of tooling selections, where there are little to no setup costs with most orders. To learn more about how Uniflex can help you manufacture reliable components, contact us through our website.
How Are They Used?
Their extremely versatile characteristics and wide range of applications mean urethane bar stock can be used in so many ways, including the following:
- Gears
- Gaskets
- Wear dads
- Truck beds
- Bumpers
- Sorter blocks
- Spout linings
- Bumper pads
- Cutting surfaces
- Impact absorption
- Machinery mounts
- Rollers and covers
- Sandblast curtains
- Metal-forming pads
- Sound-dampening pads
- Chute and hopper liners
Working with urethane bar stock can offer so many advantages with endless possibilities.
Custom Urethane Bar Stocks
Uniflex casts a huge selection of precision molded urethane bar stocks, which you can order in either metric or imperial sizes. This includes measurements that are as small as 3/8 x 3/8 x 24 inches or up to 6 x 6 x 48 inches. We also offer custom mold urethane bar stocks to meet your exact specifications, built tooling, and close-tolerance requirements.
Apart from our precision molded bar stock, we can also mold non-standard bar sizes through our open-cast molding process, without any tooling charges. Open-cast bars will generally have imperfections on the surface, such as size variations and shrinkage marks, but they have ideal uses. These include applications that need subsequent fabrication or machining of the bar, as well as applications where appearance isn’t a crucial factor.
Where Can You Purchase Them?
You can find high-quality urethane rod stock and bar stock if you know where to look. While there are some brick-and-mortar shops that sell these products, you might find that online suppliers are the better route. Opening your browser and doing your research on a website that offers a great selection of urethane rod stock and urethane bar stock can be a better source in the long run, especially if you’re tackling several projects.
Many customers have already seen the benefits that online shopping offers, which include:
- Honest reviews from past clients
- 24/7 customer service
- High-quality polyurethane products
- Quick and easy checkout systems
- Fast delivery
- And more
These are just a few of the advantages we offer on the Uniflex website, plus our manufacturing plant, for all your polyurethane needs. Fully equipped with all the latest equipment, our in-house machine shop is home to our team of experts who produce polyurethane rods and bars known for their durability and versatility. Moreover, we only use top-grade materials to ensure that we consistently produce world-class polyurethane products for you.
How Can You Purchase Them?
If you opt to buy your polyurethane products from a manufacturer, you will most likely have to wait for information and a quote. However, a faster route would be to review all your needs online, where you can check for the background of the company you wish to purchase from while looking for other important details such as:
- The quality of the urethane products
- Whether they can deliver your specifications
- Purchase order requirements
- Development of design and concepts
- The time it takes for full-time production
- Whether products are made in the USA
- And more
At Uniflex, we can streamline your company’s supply chain by developing and creating urethane rods and urethane bars exactly the way you need them. In the end, you’ll get more time to focus on the important parts of your business, while you leave all your urethane needs to us. You can count on our team to deliver stellar products and services, which include the following:
- Waterjet-cut urethane parts
- Custom mold manufacturing
- Automated adhesive applications
- Rotational and open-cast molding
- Post-secondary assembly
- On-site testing
- World-class metal preparation
- Online support service
- Custom diameters
- High-speed finishing equipment
- And more
Call Uniflex Today
Our team offers affordable, high-quality products that can’t be matched by any of our competitors; we provide specialty materials, rapid prototyping, and high-volume production for your orders. Uniflex specializes in custom urethanes, which we use to help customers design, develop, and manufacture everything under one roof. As a result, we can provide faster lead times while keeping costs low – without having to sacrifice quality.
Many of our previous customers can testify to the many useful traits that our urethane rods and bars have, which include the following:
- Excellent resistance to corrosion
- Excellent resistance to abrasion
- Excellent resistance to chemicals
- Excellent resistance to solvents
- Excellent resistance to oil
- Excellent resistance to oxidation
- High resilience
- High tensile strength
- High durability
- High versatility
Moreover, our team of experts always applies precision and speed to their production systems, so you can count on us to meet your expectations for volume and accuracy every time you order. No matter what your project is, you can be sure that we’ll add value to every product through our years of experience working with urethane products and our fantastic customer support. We’re also proud to share that our engineers are some of the best in the industry, which means that your products will always be in good hands.
Our company has specialized in various urethane applications since 1979 and has been a trusted supplier for a wide range of industries. With short lead times, high-quality products, rapid prototyping, as well as fast and free quotes, we’re the team to contact for all your urethane and polyurethane needs. If you have a custom molded urethane request, be sure to contact Uniflex at 248-486-6000 or request a quote online today.