Rubber articles adapted to make weldable seals; their manufacture and use

摘要

A flexible rubber article such as a neck or cuff seal (1) for a drysuit is made of natural rubber in a conventional way, by dipping a former into a sensitized rubber latex. The application describes applying a thin thermoplastics layer e.g. about 25 mum thick on the surface of the natural rubber so that it can conveniently be welded to another thermoplastics component such as a hot-melt tape. The thermoplastics layer (4,5) may cover the whole or only a marginal part of the rubber article. It may be formed by dipping into a thermoplastics latex. The thermoplastics layer may cover the whole or only a margin of the rubber article. Polyurethane is one suitable material. By providing a non-tacky weldable region the invention is more convenient to use than previous proposals using adhesives.