How a piece of wire becomes an HD 110# spring

Hamilton Cams

Hamilton Cams

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Jun 28, 2007
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I toured the production plant where my springs are made. I thought I knew alot about springs and the entire manufacturing process.......then I got to meet a bunch of engineers that have made springs their lives. They have picked it apart down to the molecular level. Here are a few of the pics
http://s240.photobucket.com/albums/ff203/zacheryhamilton/?action=view&current=DSC01293.jpg

First the spool of specialty wire comes in bulk to the plant.Before it is used in any processes, it is tested for tensile strength until it breaks, so that it can be graded. Next, the finish is checked with an electron microscope for uniformity. Lastly before it is loaded up, it is put into high resolution x-ray machine to test for inclusions. Inclusions are the main source of spring failures. They result from air bubbles getting trapped inside the wire as it is formed. Most fractures originate at the point of inclusion, so if you eliminate these, you eliminate most failures. At any time duing the process if a spring fails it is sent tho the lab right away. Here is a picture of a spring that failed during the coiling process.
http://i240.photobucket.com/albums/ff203/zacheryhamilton/DSC01283.jpg

A closer look
http://i240.photobucket.com/albums/ff203/zacheryhamilton/DSC01282.jpg

And with the help of an electron microscope...... a closer look.
http://i240.photobucket.com/albums/ff203/zacheryhamilton/DSC01280.jpg

The x-ray machine
http://i240.photobucket.com/albums/ff203/zacheryhamilton/DSC01284.jpg

The cnc coiler
http://i240.photobucket.com/albums/ff203/zacheryhamilton/DSC01294.jpg
 
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After the spring is coiled it then goes through an oven to relax the spring before it is ground to installed heighth. Unfortunately this is a proprietary process and no cameras were allowed in this area. So just imagine a big hot room with a lot of springs in it, and a cnc grinder being run by two guys that make it their top priority to make sure your seat pressure perfect. Next comes the shot peening and nitriding and you guessed it, no cameras. I can tell you that this is what sets this manufacturer apart from others. The additional steps taken to make sure the spring has long life without high load loss or fatigue fractures. They have spent thousands of man hours to perfect and tweek the size, velocity and material used in this process. This process is what make a major difference if the sprig fails at 2million cycles or 10million cycles which brings me to the next process, testing.
 
After the spring is coiled it then goes through an oven to relax the spring before it is ground to installed heighth. Unfortunately this is a proprietary process and no cameras were allowed in this area. So just imagine a big hot room with a lot of springs in it, and a cnc grinder being run by two guys that make it their top priority to make sure your seat pressure perfect. Next comes the shot peening and nitriding and you guessed it, no cameras. I can tell you that this is what sets this manufacturer apart from others. The additional steps taken to make sure the spring has long life without high load loss or fatigue fractures. They have spent thousands of man hours to perfect and tweek the size, velocity and material used in this process. This process is what make a major difference if the spring fails at 2million cycles or 10million cycles which brings me to the next process, testing. The manufacturer has found ways to test almost anything that can be tested, that pertains to function and longevity of springs. First is the load bank. This is a machine that runs 24 hours a day for months at a time, at 1800 rpm I believe( Which would be like 3600rpm in an engine). The springs are placed in this bank and then the "stroke" is adjusted to mimic different cam profiles at varying lifts. It also has oil that is heated to temperatures normally found in engines so that the tests will yield real world results on load loss and failures. This is important so that the failures happen at the factory not while you are spanking a ford. ( I need to stop saying this since we are coming out with a 6.0 lineup)
http://i240.photobucket.com/albums/ff203/zacheryhamilton/DSC01286.jpg

After the quality tests come the functional test. This sees how the spring reacts in real world valve train situations. An electric motor spins a built up engine to any speed up to 11,000 rpm. On this particular day a motor was being run on the spintron for an oem manufacturer. You would be suprised how much of the noise that comes from an engine is caused by the valvetrain. This particular v-6 was deafening as it was spun to almost 9,000rpm.
http://i240.photobucket.com/albums/ff203/zacheryhamilton/DSC01289.jpg
Now here is where the rubber meets the road. After decades of building some of the top springs in the world, the manufacturer has a pretty good idea of what each application needs. But just to make sure these pressure transducers and and strain gauges measure spring motion, valve bounce(float) harmonics and a slew of other data. This can then be overlaid with other springs or other designs, to make the best springs possible!
http://i240.photobucket.com/albums/ff203/zacheryhamilton/DSC01290.jpg
http://i240.photobucket.com/albums/ff203/zacheryhamilton/DSC01291.jpg

I hope you have gotten more from this than a pissing match, which is the normal way data has been disclosed in the past. I am busy collecting information and related info on all the springs that we've recieved in our trade up to Hamilton program. We have found some pretty interesting things, look for that info in the next day or so.

Zach Hamilton
 
Looks cool, I ran a TEM transmission electron microscope at one of my jobs out of college, it zoomed in to 600,000X, but we were looking at silicone deposition on poly carbonate plastic to replace glass side windows on trucks. The technology was very neat. Looks like your manufacturer has the latest and greatest technology!
 
They sure do! There are other spring manufactureres out there for sure. If someone has a real problem we have this amazing resource of failure analysis to determine why the part failed and what can be done to prevent this in the future. That is worth a lot of piece of mind.


Zach Hamilton
 
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