Kyle R., Joe D.

After years of tolerating "hit or miss" micro-production runs of made-when-ordered vendor spec'd wire seals for Vacuum Bake Oven D (VBOD), we finally convinced them to make a custom batch using our own, in-house, specifications.  No leaks now, so far so good.  The defining difference is that now the seals are slightly undersized and require a slight "stretching" to snap into place on the female flange.  The vendor spec'd ones are fabricated to the final design length and then annealed to the point that they are so soft that they can't be handled without causing them to become elongated during packaging so, by the time we receive them, they are too long and are usually so loose as to be unreliably captured between the flanges.  These, then, and end up leaking 1/2 of the time after the bake cycle (which is very expensive in time and labor to gamble).