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Benefits of Urethane Stock
Why Urethane Outperforms Rubber and Plastic
Urethane offers engineering teams and maintenance departments advantages that rubber and plastic can't match — especially for components that face abrasion, impact, or chemical exposure.
Abrasion & Cut Resistance
Urethane has significantly higher resistance to abrasion and cutting than rubber. Parts last longer between replacements, reducing maintenance labor and downtime. Polyurethane can be engineered in multiple durometers (40A to 90A Shore A, and up to 70D Shore D) to balance hardness with flexibility for your specific duty.
Chemical & Oil Resistance
While rubber degrades or swells when exposed to oils, solvents, and many industrial chemicals, urethane holds up. This makes it ideal for machinery in processing environments, hydraulic lines, and areas with fuel or coolant splash.
Load-Bearing Capacity
Urethane can handle high compressive loads without permanent deformation — a property called elastic memory. It returns to its original shape after load is removed, making it reliable for recurring stress cycles. This is why shops use urethane for bushings, pads, and impact-absorption components.
Lower Tooling Cost Than Molding Alternatives
Urethane can be cast in many shapes without expensive steel dies if you start with standard stock (rod, sheet, bar) and machine it to finished dimensions. Custom rod lengths, sheet thicknesses, and bar widths are available at no extra tooling cost — you only pay for the material.
Vibration Damping & Noise Reduction
Polyurethane naturally absorbs shock and reduces vibration transmission better than rigid plastics. It's quieter than metal and more durable than rubber in applications where both properties matter.
Cost Efficiency
When you buy standard urethane stock directly from the manufacturer, you avoid distributor markup. Custom durometers and sizes (within the same cast run) cost the same as standard orders.
Aesthetic & Durability
Polyurethane is available in multiple colors and resists discoloration better than rubber. It maintains appearance over time, which matters for visible wear components.
Benefits of Polyurethane Rods
With a long history of outstanding quality, superior product performance, and excellent customer service, PSI is a trusted provider of custom urethane rods and urethane rod stock.
Urethane rods offer several important benefits due to their elastomeric properties. PSI’s urethane rods are made of tough, crack-resistant, and abrasion-resistant polyurethane, which lasts significantly longer than conventional rubbers and plastics. We provide custom diameters, lengths, hardness, and colors with little or no tooling costs.
Our urethane rods are abrasion & crack resistant, flexible, and have excellent tear strength. In applications such as guide, drive, or pinch rollers they outwear conventional rubber rollers up to FIVE times.
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Benefits of Polyurethane Sheets
Universal Urethane has also developed a multi-hardness/dual-durometer urethane sheet which can be cast in custom colors and hardness’s. The casting process involves a hard durable protective layer casted to a soft layer that can be used in applications where standard cast urethane sheets will not meet the required performance life in more demanding applications. These two layers are bonded together in the manufacturing process and are made not to delaminate even under extreme conditions.
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Benefits of Polyurethane Bars
Polyurethane rods & bars are versatile products well suited for machining into custom items in low volume products such as bumpers, stops and bushings. Specialized formulations allow for ease in grinding or machining. Other available formulations include high rebound urethane with low compression set characteristics, high-temperature formulations, and abrasion-resistant. We offer a large tooling selection with little to no setup costs on most orders.
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