BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (May 13, 2015) – SEPCO (Sealing Equipment Products Co., Inc.) recently visited The National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA’s) Kennedy Space Center in Florida to assist NASA in creating a custom fluid sealing solution for NASA’s crawler-transporter, the largest self-powered land vehicle in the world. SEPCO’s solution will help NASA’s crawler-transporters carry NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) and Orion spacecraft to Launch Pad 39B for launch on Exploration Mission-1 in 2018.

Vencore, the engineering services contractor for NASA contacted Chris Wilder, CEO of SEPCO, based on SEPCO’s experience in the fluid sealing industry at manufacturing high quality mechanical seals and packing. SEPCO evaluated the crawlers’ mean time between seal replacements and worked alongside NASA Engineers to develop a custom product that will improve efficiency and equipment reliability.

“The SEPCO team is excited to be collaborating with NASA on this sealing application,” said Wilder. They are a great group of cutting edge professionals and it’s been rewarding for our engineers to work on sealing applications with national implications. We’re a pretty patriotic bunch.”

The crawler-transporters are a pair of tracked vehicles used to transport spacecraft from NASA’s Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) along with the Crawlerway to Launch Complex 39. The Kennedy Space Center, located on Merritt Island near Cape Canaveral in Florida, has been using these same two crawlers, nicknamed “Hans” and “Franz” since their initial delivery in 1965. They were originally used to transport Saturn IB and Saturn V rockets during the Apollo, Skylab and Apollo-Soyuz programs.

Located in Alabaster, Alabama, SEPCO (Sealing Equipment Products Co., Inc.) manufactures a line of mechanical seals, compression packing and gasketing materials that deliver shutdown-to-shutdown performance for industrial pumps, valves and other rotating equipment.