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"The Grand Deception"
IMPAK Corporation is a very technical company. We are uncomfortable referring to things as "approximately" or "about" and seal width is an excellent example of a standard misleading practice in the industry. You will see 2 millimeters (mm) seals often referred to as "about 1/8" and 5mm seals will often be referred to as "about 1/4."
The simple fact is that there are 25.4mm in an inch, thus a seal that is 1/10" would actually be 2.54mm. Thus a supplier that tries to present a 2mm seal as being about 1/8" which would be xx mm is actually saying that the seal is x% larger than it actually is. (See table below)
| English system of measurement | Metric system of measurement |
| 1 inch | 24.4 mm |
| 1/2 inch | 12.7 mm |
| 1/4 inch | 6.35 mm |
| 1/8 inch | 3.18 mm |
| 1/16 inch | 1.59 mm |
There are other reasons to use our higher quality 5mm seal units, they include:
- Longer machine life
- Higher power for sealing thicker materials
- Higher quality hermetic seal
- Easy to use with thicker materials
So in the end, be careful if a company is only telling you that a machine is a 1/4" seal when virually all of these machines worldwide are produced to a metric system of millimeters. Ask them if they can tell you what the actual width of the seal is.
