Short Order & Secondary Department
SHORT ORDER DEPARTMENT
Making springs by hand basically consists of bending wire around a rod called an arbor or mandrel. The arbor is secured in the chuck of a lathe.
For the smaller batch sizes and particularly when using larger wire sizes we use a CNC lathe.
Square and rectangular wire: All types of coil springs can be made from either type. Using these materials gives you a stronger spring than if you use round wire for the same design. We make large quantities of Square or rectangular wire springs at our Texas facility, where then have machines to coil the flat stock.
SECONDARY DEPARTMENT - Extended Hooks, Torsion Ends, & Loops
Wire forms: Wire forms are any shape made out of wire — not just a coil. There are a jillion different kinds of wire forms.
Limited-travel extension springs: Sometimes you'll want to make an extension spring that only extends so far and then stops. You'll see these sometimes on screen doors, or farm fencing, these are called draw bar springs:
Extended Hooks
You may want to make an extension spring with extended hooks, like this:
The best way to do this is to coil the spring as if it were a torsion spring and then bend the ends over to form the extended hooks.
Loops and Hooks
Loops will work best for most extension springs. Sometimes, though, you'll want hooks — like when you want to slip the spring onto a pin, for instance.
Making hooks is very simple, once you've made loops: all you have to do is cut the end of the wire off so that it doesn't come all the way around to the body of the spring.
Swivel Hooks
Extension springs are also sometimes made with hooks that are separate from the springs that swivel. The last few end coils would be a conical shape to hold the hook in place.
Torsion Spring Ends
Don't forget that torsion springs come left-handed and right-handed. Be sure to make your request in the correct direction.
Torsion Springs start with straight arms. They quite often have one or more bends, to fit within a movement device, tooling, or to hit a stopping point in the final product.
Double torsion springs: Do you recall how torsion springs can be either left-handed or right-handed? Well, sometimes you'll want to make a torsion spring that's both. Such springs are sometimes found on clipboards, and they might look like this.
Making double torsion springs means making some pretty specialized tooling, Depending on the wire size, they can be formed on a CNC machine or a manual lathe.
