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Heat Treatment Help

cudafamily

Aluminum
Joined
Oct 31, 2013
Location
Evansville, IN
Needing to create a custom spring for a project in the shop. Planning on using and existing compression spring. OD 0.781, wire diameter 0.125. Plan on annealing and then forming into needed shape. Will water harden. My dilemma is what temp to use to temper the part so its not to brittle but will still have the elasticity to function as a spring?
 
The normal country blacksmith method is to polish a surface or surfaces and watch as it heats. When the steel turns a nice sky blue, pull it out of the furnace and let it cool in air. That works for carbon steel. Different alloys will vary and without knowing the alloy there is no way to make a better judgement.

Bill
 
Good lord! Custom spring for a shop project? You should really try and alter your design around an existing spring.
 
Typically springs are oil hardening steel.

Temper to dark blue to grey on a polished section.

I would start with music wire from McMaster.com and do a stress relief of 375F after forming.

Ed.
 
Thanks to all those offering insight. Unfortunately this forum has always had more than its share of those individuals that feel like it is their duty to demean and belittle posters. Guess it makes them feel important and they probably need that type of stimulus to continually bolster their egos. If you have nothing positive to post keep your lame comments with your lame personality
 
Thanks to all those offering insight. Unfortunately this forum has always had more than its share of those individuals that feel like it is their duty to demean and belittle posters. Guess it makes them feel important and they probably need that type of stimulus to continually bolster their egos. If you have nothing positive to post keep your lame comments with your lame personality

I didn't read anything that was mean and belittling. Every thing that was said is to the point. Trying to reuse an existing spring is not a good idea. If you modify an existing spring, how will know what the material is? There are a variety of steels used, both stainless and non-stainless. The magnet method of sorting stainless from the rest doesn't work. The steel is so heavily worked that it becomes magnetic. What makes you think that the spring was heat treated after forming? That is normally used only on BIG springs. What is the austenizing temp? Water quench on alloy steels often leads to cracking.

There are some of us here that have designed springs, both light and heavy duty. Asking us to tell you how to do this and avoid spring failure is a fool's game.

Tom
 
Thanks to all those offering insight. Unfortunately this forum has always had more than its share of those individuals that feel like it is their duty to demean and belittle posters. Guess it makes them feel important and they probably need that type of stimulus to continually bolster their egos. If you have nothing positive to post keep your lame comments with your lame personality

Cudafamily: I don't think they meant to be demeaning. That was just experience talking. If they we intending to belittle, it would have been far more vicious.

JH
 
Thanks to all those offering insight. Unfortunately this forum has always had more than its share of those individuals that feel like it is their duty to demean and belittle posters. Guess it makes them feel important and they probably need that type of stimulus to continually bolster their egos. If you have nothing positive to post keep your lame comments with your lame personality

Don't let those posts get you down. It happens all the time with any question asked. Remember it only takes one good answer from one person who actually knows what they are doing to move your project ahead. The other 10 posts are easily ignored. Unfortunately not very many people are interested in actually understanding a process and how things work, so you tend to get a lot of answers like "why don't you call a spring expert, hope this helps"
 
Thanks to all those offering insight. Unfortunately this forum has always had more than its share of those individuals that feel like it is their duty to demean and belittle posters...
My comment wasn't intended to be demeaning. Century Spring has been around for quite a while, has a huge catalog, and reasonable prices. In my experience modified springs don't provide reasonable life. The work you are putting into the spring could be better put to changing other parts to work with an off the shelf spring.

What type of spring are we talking about? Compression?
 
Thanks to all those offering insight. Unfortunately this forum has always had more than its share of those individuals that feel like it is their duty to demean and belittle posters. Guess it makes them feel important and they probably need that type of stimulus to continually bolster their egos. If you have nothing positive to post keep your lame comments with your lame personality
"Change your design to buy it"
Is somehow "Demeneaning" ?

Wow, just wow...:nutter:
 
Don't let those posts get you down. It happens all the time with any question asked. Remember it only takes one good answer from one person who actually knows what they are doing to move your project ahead. The other 10 posts are easily ignored. Unfortunately not very many people are interested in actually understanding a process and how things work, so you tend to get a lot of answers like "why don't you call a spring expert, hope this helps"

It'snot that at all. The post title is "heat treatment help", then the guy asks about modifying a damn spring and re-heat treating it with guesses about what the material is. I think the "asshole" replies are because we see this nonsense a more and more. Some idiot asks a stupid question (remember the guy wanting to make round tube out of square or viceversa? :rolleyes5:) then they get pissed off when they get smart ass answers. And yes, I said idiot. It wouldn't be any different if I went to a professional photography forum and asked how to make a perfect print (or whatever terminology they use :D) with my $30 walmart camera. I would be the idiot there :cheers: and I would deserve the ass reaming I got from it.
 
99.999% of all of the springs I've designed, and ones designed before me, and so on are totally special for the applications they are use in. Yes, I try to pick a stock one, lots of times that won't work for one reason or another. For a prototype, I've actually gone down to my local True Value hardware store and picked up several in their selection to try. Modified many to work for our needs. Never re-heat treated any of them after reforming the ends to work. If the prototype spring worked, then the design was sent to our favorite spring vendor and made in larger quantities for production. So, I guess to answer what the OP was asking, I personally don't see a need to re-heat treat a spring after modifying. The most would be to re-temper the area of change, drawing it to a temperature of the color of the spring material as described above and call it good. Ken
 
Modified many to work for our needs.

I guess that makes you a total idiot per this thread. Likewise I've modified many springs for a particular application so I'm an idiot also. The OP is going to have trouble modifying a spring with .78 OD and .125 wire diameter. He will likely need to heat the wire red in order to move it. I've done that too and somehow it still had quite a bit of spring in it. Done right he'd have to take it to a heat treater and have the spring annealed or normalized and then re-treat it. Anyhoo, all this thread needs now is for thermite to climb on board and write three pages describing how he made a rifle spring in nam out of barbed wire and heat treated it using a book of matches and a magnifying glass.
 
I would check out "This Old Tony" video here:

YouTube

Shows how to make a spring using your lathe.

Chuck
Burbank, CA

This video has the same problem that I often see in ones about spring making. When he winds a spring, he has to bend the wire past the yield point or it wouldn't stay in the new shape. That means that a considerable part of its cross section is near the yield point and will be stressed past it when the spring is flexed. I have personal experience with the problem. I made some coiled springs and found that they would take a set when expanded or compressed to their design limits. Areas that were near the yield point went past it and took a new shape. When I baked them as atex57 says, they performed to the design specs. People apparently don't read past the design section to the stress relieving part or just don't think it is necessary.

I didn't include stress relief in my answer because the OP was going to do a full heat treat.

I would buy music wire from McMaster Carr and make whatever I wanted, then stress relieve them, but that wasn't the question.

Bill
 
Your dealing with an unknown alloy. Heat to a cherry red and reform to desired shape. Then polish the surface. Use a propane torch, using care to slowly and evenly bring the spring to a blue temper. Quench in oil.

All the best,
Roger
 
Your dealing with an unknown alloy. Heat to a cherry red and reform to desired shape. Then polish the surface. Use a propane torch, using care to slowly and evenly bring the spring to a blue temper. Quench in oil.

All the best,
Roger

I hope not in this order. Based on what I know about metallurgy, quenching from a blue temper is completely futile. Might work out OK if you move "quench in oil" up a couple steps, between cherry red and polishing. But it's still a mystery alloy, so don't expect performance equivalent to a properly designed, properly worked, commercially available spring.
 








 
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