Posted to News on 11th May 2016, 16:07
Lee Spring custom designs aid bounce-back of UK manufacturing
Lee Spring is promoting its capability for the custom design and manufacture of springs and spring components. From engines to trim, toys to medical devices, and instrumentation to valves, Lee Spring's capability for quickly creating application-specific springs and spring components is aiding the regrowth of UK manufacturing industry.
Although Lee Spring carries over 23,000 catalogued items, it is common to find that a variant or entirely custom item is required to suit a new design or assembly process. A special spring design may add quality to product operation or its longevity, often with significant savings in component cost and/or assembly time.
Lee Spring's technical and cultural capability, derived from experience since 1918 working alongside customers, enables the company's engineers to develop project specifications to international standards such as RoHS, REACH and DFARS. They can hand-hold customers through the specification, prototyping and development/trials process to final sign-off and mainline production. This includes full CAD modelling on to prototyping and supply chain management for commercial, industrial, aerospace and military sectors. Custom springs may be stocked in depth to meet customers' demand schedules, enabling efficient and timely deliveries to be made wherever required worldwide.
Customised variants of standard designs
Typical custom variants of standard springs include varying finishes, alternative materials for enhanced performance, polishing or coating, non-standard loadings, non-standard sizes, matching to suit exceptional environments, demands for extreme longevity or specific concerns regarding materials matching, etc. A common request is to meet tighter tolerances for specialist housing designs. This custom process encompasses special standards requirements, non-standard finishes - for aesthetic or functional reasons, such as colour matching or colour coding - as well as special shapes, special end forming, retaining clips. plus wire forms and stampings or other formed metal parts (fourslide parts), trim clips, etc.
The specification of custom springs or components can involve production in materials such as beryllium copper, brass, hard-drawn carbon steel, oil-tempered carbon steel, oil-tempered chrome silicon, oil-tempered chrome vanadium, Elgiloy, Hastelloy, Inconel, Monel, music wire, phosphor bronze, plastic composites, 300 series stainless steel and 17-7 stainless steel.
A vital part of custom design, of course, is the selection of secondary operations such as assembly, colour coding, electro-polishing, grinding, heat treating, looping, passivation, powder coating, shot peening, spring setting, plating - for example, with nickel or zinc - and the use of other special finishes such as black oxide.
Further information about Lee Spring's custom design and manufacture of springs and spring components can be found at www.leespring.co.uk.
