Making Springs At Home

today on this old Tony Springs springs are elastic devices that store mechanical energy once to form do they return to their former shape when the least Springs are typically used to exert or maintain a force or to absorb movement they're available in all shapes and sizes except the one you need developed in the 1500s by the sea monks of Denmark Springs were originally created to fill the gap between winters and summers today Springs are really bouncing back making Springs at home is nothing to get bent out of shape about homemade Springs don't have to be aligned up most coiled metal Springs start their lives off as metal it all begins with a machine that carefully selects the proper wire size the wire is clamped to a sturdy tool referred to in the industry as that round metal thing why this genius didn't purchase a commercially available spring is a closely guarded trade secret generally speaking there are two important steps to successfully making a spring design and manufacture skipping step one may result in a spring that performs poorly or fails altogether skipping step two likely results in no spring at all but let's not lose focus after all designing an airplane probably isn't easy but it all depends on the final application doesn't it let's take a quick and simplified look at what we usually ask Springs to do first it needs to fit over all dimensions are probably the first thing you know second it needs to provide the correct force and amount of travel for the job its intended to do and finally stress levels in the spring must be kept low enough for the material to handle the load and the cycles we expect not much of a spring if it fails second time use it is it however if you're masochistic tendencies run deep and you'd like to design your own spring the handbook is a good place to start it's basic but it'll get you a properly functioning spring if your spring is complicated or you're interested in things like how many cycles it's good for you'll need to resort to some math that we're turn to specialized software UTS is advance spring design is a good one but it will set you back a few dollars however all hope is not lost here's what you do cheap have a look at commercially available Springs check places like mcmaster-carr or any of a host of spring manufacturers online you'll find large catalogues of Springs that have already been designed to work assuming you use them the way that they're intended if you find your spring great buy it just kidding if you're making a spring you probably have a good reason look closely at all the data available spring size wire diameter pitch material type etc and build yours as close to that as possible let's say for example you're building a better mousetrap you're unlikely to find a commercially available spring but try to break it down into parts look for commercial springs that are closed and build your basic spring from there won't be perfect but certainly better than a stick in the eye time to get this show on the road so you have your spring dimensions wonderful you'll now need some music wire music wire is cold drawn heat treated wire you might find it at your local hardware store online or your neighbor's piano like me music wire can move pretty fast and pack quite the punch gloves and eye protection are probably a good idea finally you'll need a mandrel to form your spring over to recap drawing wire mandrel you're now Bob's nephew the size and shape of the mandrel depend on the spring you're making the mandrel is undersized to account for the spring back in the wire after forming the amount of spring back depends on the diameter your winding to the diameter of the wire and the material of the wire itself mandrels for a range of spring sizes and wire diameters can be found in the handbook note that this is for music wire if you're using spicy bronze your results will differ also Marv clots wrote a handy program that calculates mandrel size it is available for free ww mi virtual network comm /m clots I found it to be quite accurate Thank You Marv the mandrel will also require a wire attention feature a through-hole works fine for compression and extension Springs but you'll need a screw or some way to clamp the wire for torsion springs if this were a torsion spring you'd have quite the time getting it off the mandrel begin by selecting or making the mandrel you need unless you need to duck every time it comes around mandrel run-out is usually not important to get consistent results from your combination of wire diameter and mandrel you'll want to keep the wire tension as constant as possible during winding in practice this is more important on larger wire diameters on smaller manuals there are likely a number of ways to do this first you could simply hold the wire with pliers maintaining a constant tension during the winding process a safer alternative might be to feed your wire through an empty tool holder using a small piece of plastic or soft material to act as a brake adjust the clamping screws to achieve the pressure and therefore the wire tension that works best if you're a bit touched like I am you may want to make a dedicated tool this holder using a small piece of brass as a brake shoe and a replaceable big nozzle offers the discerning spring maker the surgical precision they might not even need set your lathe to its lowest speed and to the pitch of spring you'd like to wind ensure your lathe will move the way you expect it to making sure spindle and feed directions are correct it's now time to make the doughnuts start by making the first few wraps manually move the carriage to keep up with the coils letting the coils lead a bit to ensure they stay nice and closed these are referred to as enact coils when happy engage the half nuts and start the lathe stop the lathe and disengage the half nuts as before wrap a few more inactive coils manually be sure to use caution when cutting the Springfree check the length of the spring and make sure you have the desired number of active coils active coils do all the work half of a turn more or less than what you designed may have a big impact on performance trim the ends AV block and belt grinder make quick work of squaring the spring torsion and extension Springs are way on the same way with some patience and a bit more care than being demonstrated you can make quite the handsome Springs at home Springs change shape as they're loaded and unloaded for example a compression spring will expand and a torsion spring might contract keep this in mind if you plan to install them in pockets or on arbors finally be sure to pay attention to the handedness of your Springs Springs use long bolts or threaded rod should have the opposite wrap direction to keep them from binding the same goes for nested Springs well that's all for today although there are more subtleties in the design and manufacture of Springs you're now well on your way to shooting your eye out as always thank you for watching

Channel: This Old Tony

Views: 3,277,654

Rating: 4.8797359 out of 5

Keywords: springs, compression springs, torsion springs, making springs on the lathe, machinery's handbook, uts, advanced spring design, winding springs, making springs

Id: jAawhg6JtyY

Length: 8min 26sec (506 seconds)

Published: Wed May 25 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/TrinityDejavu]

Love subtle engineer humour.

[u/sjhaakie]

i love the "how its made" style bad puns in the intro

[u/seycyrus]

Step 1: Own machine shop.

[u/frequentthrowaway]

I've done this a couple times. It's pretty neat. I hadn't thought of/seen before the double torsion spring, which is also cool.

I think he needs tailstock support, though. A lot of deflection on that mandrel.

[u/jlpoole]

Punchy and to the point, for 8 1/2 minutes this video really was thorough.

McMaster-Carr also has a good variety of piano wire: http://www.mcmaster.com/#piano-wire/=12lwb30

[u/Tarnwyn]

I learnt about springs today. Neat.

[u/SputTop]

I have a feeling his comments come from personal expierence

[u/BaconJacobs]

This video was great, it's like a bootleg "How It's Made". I genuinely lol'd at the jokes.

[u/GhostfaceHecklah]

Cool video!