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HOW TO MAKE SPRINGS by Dave Silberstein


Until a few years ago, Dave Silberstein maintained a great site at EarthLink that delved into the mysteries of making springs. It was very extensive. If you needed to make a spring, his site helped you do it. He even went so far as to publish the site contents in book form at Lulu.com. Sadly, both the site and the book are no longer available because Mr. Silberstein passed away in 2012 in a car accident.

Such a valuable resource should not be lost. Fortunately, the WayBack Machine of the Internet Archive has kept an archived copy.

Here's the site map so you can get an idea of what's available and also so the search engines will pick it up.


HOW TO MAKE SPRINGS
Introduction
Disclaimer, preface, description of the main types of springs
Design
General principles, mathematics, design limitations, buying design
Materials
Types of wire and their attributes, buying wire
Safety
General safety, wire handling, opening and closing coils, coiling safety, wire storage
Equipment
Winding machines, drills, hand winders, lathes, grinding equipment, finishing equipment, ovens, passivating equipment, hand tools, testing equipment, tooling stock
Tooling
Pickup pins, wire guides, looping plates and rods, layover plates, bending pipes, bending jigs, passivating baskets, grinding stages
Setup
First coils, drill setup, hand winder setup, lathe setup, left-handed springs, coiling without a lead screw
Torsion springs

Wire length, first trial spring, torsion spring ends, extended hooks
Extension springs
Wire length, first trial spring, loops, hooks, swivel hooks
Compression springs
Wire length, first trial spring, grinding the ends, squareness, free length adjustments, setting solid, heat setting
Finishing
Tweaking dimensions, stress relief, passivation, plating
Other types of springs
Buckling columns, nested compression springs, conical compression springs, variable-pitch springs, snap-rings, double-torsion springs, wire forms, bedsprings, limited-travel extension springs, braided wire springs, heavy wire, light wire, square and flat wire, tubular stock, leaf springs, Belleville washers, clock springs
Spring shops
Organization, product costing and pricing, careers
Glossary
Definitions of spring-related words, detailed diagrams of the major types of springs and their parts
Resources
Sources of information, associations, spring shops, suppliers, and other related links
Credits
About this site; about me; and how to download this site.
New stuff
This is an index page that provides access to new stuff added since January, 2003, and a chronicle of updates to the main body of the site.

Here's the link to the entire website for HOW TO MAKE SPRINGS.


There is a slightly older version of the site available for download as a ZIP file.

A PDF version is hosted here.

Here's a site that describes a homemade spring coiler. And two more sites for similar tools: One, Two.

A YouTube video of a spring winder.

DI-ACRO made a spring winder that shows up on eBay once in a while. Other manufacturers have made and make spring winding tools as well.

Sean Michael Ragan has an informative spring-making site.

Tempering a spring.

Also an excellent, down-to-earth HOWTO site for spring-making is Randy Hengl's. He has an interesting approach to tempering the springs: burning them in motor oil.

Comments

Hoyt said…
Randy's site is available through the Internet Archive https://web.archive.org/web/20190524180053/http://www.metalsmith.org/pub/mtlsmith/V21.2/Springs.htm
December 30, 2023 at 1:51 PM
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