What are old car parts good for? How to make a spring: step-by-step instructions and recommendations Useful things from springs

According to experts, making a spring with high performance characteristics and in compliance with all necessary parameters is possible only on special factory equipment. Nevertheless, the technological process itself is not complicated.

The question of how to make a spring at home is quite relevant. This is due to the fact that there are situations when you have at hand home handyman there may be no spring required diameter. In this case, you have to make it yourself. How to make a spring with your own hands? What tools are needed for this? You will find information on how to make a spring at home in this article.

What will you need for work?

Before making a spring, you need to acquire the following consumables and equipment:

• Steel wire.
• Bench vice.
• A regular gas burner.
• A mandrel on which the wire will be wound.
• Thermal or household oven.

About the wire

It is desirable that it be hardened high carbon steel. You can use special carbon and alloyed or non-ferrous alloys: 60HFA, 70S3A, 65G, 60S2A, etc. Judging by the reviews, many home craftsmen remake old unnecessary springs. This method is considered the most optimal, since such a product usually uses wire with excellent technical characteristics.

About the diameter

How to make a spring? What wire diameter should I choose? Experts recommend using consumables with a diameter of no more than 0.2 cm. Due to the fact that such wire bends easily, it does not require preliminary heat treatment. Before winding onto the mandrel, it is unbent and carefully aligned. When choosing the diameter for the mandrel, you should proceed from the dimensions of the future spring. In other words, the internal cross-section of the product must be taken into account. Many craftsmen compensate for elastic deformations of the wire by carefully selecting mandrels smaller diameter. When working with wire thicker than 0.2 cm, difficulties often arise when winding it onto the mandrel. In this case, you will have to perform preliminary annealing.

Where should I start?

Experts recommend using wire from an old spring whose diameter does not suit the owner. The craftsman will only have to align it and wind it onto a mandrel with a section the right size. To do this, the wire must be absolutely straight. It will be much more plastic if it is processed in a special oven. If you don’t have one, any other device that can be heated with firewood will do. As they say experienced craftsmen, birch provides sufficient heat for firing. After lighting the stove, you need to wait for the wood to burn in it. Only coals should remain. You should put the old spring in them. If the product is hot enough, it will turn red. Now the spring can be moved to the side so that it cools in the air. After this procedure, the metal will become plastic and easy to work with.

How to make a spring?

After waiting until the old product has cooled down sufficiently, they begin to unwind it. Absolutely straight wire should be wound onto the mandrel. For those who do not know how to make a spring, experts recommend placing the coils close together. At this stage, the master will have to make physical effort. The mandrel is clamped in a bench vice.

The work will be much easier if you use pliers. Judging by the reviews of experienced craftsmen, very often beginners have difficulty selecting the size of the mandrel. It is possible that you will have to work not with one mandrel, but with several with different sections. Diameter for homemade spring in this case, it is selected empirically.

Hardening of the product

For those who are interested in how to make a spring themselves, experienced craftsmen also advise paying attention to its hardening. This procedure consists of heat treatment of the product in order to give it the required elasticity.

A spring that has undergone hardening becomes much harder and more durable compared to its original state. Heat treatment is performed in special furnaces at temperatures from 830 to 870 degrees. You can also cope with this work at home using a regular gas burner. Since there are usually no temperature sensors in such devices, the home craftsman will have to control the process visually. The color of the item being heated can be used as a guide. When heated to 800 degrees, the metal turns cherry red. This means that it is too early to remove the product from the oven. If the spring is hot enough (870 degrees), it will turn light red. Now it should be cooled. Transformer or spindle oil is suitable for this purpose. In special factory thermal furnaces, metals are heated to 1050 degrees. Products with this temperature conditions take on orange tints.

Final stage

After the hardening procedure, the spring should be compressed and left in this position for two days. Then using grinder, its ends are processed. This will give the handicraft the required size. After completing all of the above steps, the spring is considered ready for use. According to experts, homemade products cannot be compared with similar factory-made products.

However, non-standard springs are widely used in various mechanisms. If they are used in a gentle manner, the springs will last quite a long time.

Most often, the question of how to make a spring yourself, using improvised means, does not arise. However, there are situations when a spring of the required diameter is not at hand. It is in such cases that the need arises to make this element with your own hands.

Of course, springs for critical mechanisms operating under intensive conditions are best manufactured in production conditions, where it is possible not only to select correctly, but also to comply with all the parameters of the technological process. If you need a non-standard spring for use in a mechanism that will be operated in a gentle mode, then you can make it at home.

What you need

To make your own spring, prepare the following supplies and equipment:

• steel wire, the diameter of which should correspond to the cross-sectional size of the turns of your future spring product;
• regular gas burner;
• a tool that every locksmith workshop must have;
• bench vice;
• a stove, which can also be used as a heating device for household use.

The wire, if its diameter does not exceed 2 mm, does not need to be subjected to preliminary heat treatment, since it is easy to bend without it. Before winding such wire onto a mandrel of the required diameter, it must be unbent and carefully aligned along the entire length of the winding.

When choosing the diameter of the mandrel, you should take into account the size of the spring that you are going to make at home. To compensate for the elastic deformation of the wire, the diameter of the mandrel is chosen slightly smaller than the required size of the internal cross-section of the future product.

If the diameter of the wire from which you are going to make a spring with your own hands is more than 2 mm, it must first be annealed, since without such a procedure it will be difficult to align it and wind it onto the mandrel.

Step-by-step instruction

The first thing you need to do if you are going to make a spring with your own hands is to select the material for such a product. Optimal material V in this case is another spring (the main thing is that the diameter of the wire from which it is made matches the cross-section of the coils of the spring that you need to make).

Annealing the wire for the spring, as mentioned above, will allow you to make it more flexible, and you can easily align it and wind it on the mandrel. To perform this procedure, it is best to use a special stove, but if you do not have one at your disposal, then you can use any other device that heats wood.

In such a stove you need to light birch wood and, when it burns down to coals, put a spring in it, the wire from which you are going to use. After the spring is red-hot, the coals must be moved to the side and the heated product allowed to cool along with the stove. After cooling, the wire will become much more flexible, and you can easily work with it at home.

The wire that has become soft should be carefully aligned and begin to be wound onto a mandrel of the required diameter. When performing this procedure, it is important to ensure that the turns are located close to each other. If you have never winded springs before, you can first watch a training video, which is easy to find on the Internet.

Step 4

In order for your new spring to have the required elasticity, it must be hardened. Heat treatment such as hardening will make the material harder and more durable. To perform hardening, the finished spring must be heated to a temperature of 830–870°, for which you can use a gas burner. You can determine that the required hardening temperature has been reached by the color of the hot spring: it should turn light red. To accurately determine this color, also rely on the video. After heating to the required temperature, the spring must be cooled in transformer or spindle oil.

Craftsmen assure that spare parts from an old car are a very good consumable for furnishing original interior houses or apartments. They can also be used quite effectively in household. Our material will be equally interesting to both those who treat these ideas with a fair amount of skepticism and those who like to be original.

Wheel disks

Perhaps, based on the degree of “integration” into the household, they can rightfully consider themselves leaders.

For example, with minimal modification they make excellent country barbecues. Various “design solutions” on this topic constantly appear in any social network, and one can only envy their ingenuity. During the search, you can come across smokehouse towers consisting of even 5-6 disks. But those who do not want to bother themselves with multi-stage engineering work argue that the simplest version of such a grill can cope with the task of preparing meat and vegetable dishes over coals. To do this, experts say, it is enough just to equip a disk turned upside down with three legs (ordinary metal tubes of the appropriate diameter will perfectly play this role), and make sure that the coals do not spill down through the holes (you can use either a solid piece of iron, or get by with a folded one). several times metal mesh with narrow cells). The result is for at least one summer season land plot You are provided with a reliable (and most importantly - inexpensive) device for cooking meat on coals.

I spoke about another fairly common way to use a wheel in the household. "SP" resident of one of the suburban dacha villages Evgeniy Volodin. “I don’t remember where I saw this option,” says the man, “but I really liked it. By simply nailing a couple of discs to the wall of the barn, I had very convenient holders for watering hoses at my disposal.” True, not so long ago Evgeniy brought the original idea a little, as they say, to fruition. One small inconvenience prompted him to “rework” it: winding the hoses onto the wheel manually after watering cannot be called clean work. Therefore, the savvy summer resident mounted the next wheel on a pin with a bearing, equipping the structure with a spring and a gear wheel with an anchor. Now, at the end of watering, the hose is wound onto the disk on its own.

"Rims can be used as a basis for coffee tables with backlight, says a freelance designer Nadezhda Agafonova. - Particularly good in combination with glass table top in this capacity cast or Forged Products with negative offset. Because the light of the LEDs or lamps hidden inside the base is scattered very beautifully due to the original design of the wheel.” However, in this case, the weight of the structure turns out to be quite decent, Agafonova clarifies.

Car interior elements

Recommendations for the use of car seats in the process of arranging the interior of a house or apartment are an imperishable “hit” of many glamorous magazines dedicated to design art. You won’t find any number of options on their pages. There are also folding rocking chairs, which can easily be converted into the front seats of any car (you just need to put them on runners and equip them with armrests), and kitchen sofas with chain swings (mainly used for these purposes rear seats). The imagination of developers, as they say, has no limits. True, it is worth noting that all this diversity is purely decorative properties. From a functional point of view, it is very difficult to find other uses for seats from an old car.

Seat belt buckles make good key holders. Provided, of course, that the bunch of keys is equipped with a keychain in the form of a buckle from this very belt. “Of course, such a unique key holder may seem somewhat cumbersome to some, as it did to me at first,” says a resident of Krasnoyarsk Polina Ozerova. “That’s why I grumbled for a long time about my husband, who hung these clamps with buttons on the wall of the hallway of our house exactly for the number of members of our family. But I soon realized that in terms of storage reliability, such a system definitely surpasses any of the most beautiful hooks, not to mention simple nails, from where keys can simply be accidentally swiped away.”

Experienced car enthusiast Igor Gladyshev from Moscow in his house crashed into everything interior doors not the usual furniture locks, but car locks. Moreover, as they say, “supported domestic manufacturer", giving preference to the model that was used, in particular, in the VAZ-2107 line of cars. “From the time I was studying at a driving school, I remembered the instructor’s words that the so-called “recessed” handles in a car are much safer than protruding ones. And when my child, always rushing around the rooms at breakneck speed, hit his forehead quite well a couple of times on the protruding handles of the usual locks, and my wife slightly cut her thigh, I decided to take this step.”

Yes, Igor explains, the mortise “American tongues” had to be removed and replaced with ordinary round latches. But now none of the household members have scratches or bruises after an accidental meeting with door locks.

Suspension and body

“In England and other European countries,” says a graduate of the Moscow Architectural Institute Ilona Sergeeva, - quite often on the properties of wealthy citizens you can see old cars, turned into small swimming pools at the whim of the owners. And in the houses themselves there are rear parts of the bodies that act as secretaries.”

In Russia, perhaps, such landscape and interior solutions would look very extravagant, but domestic craftsmen are making some interesting discoveries in this area. Resident of Krasnodar region Maxim Ya., selling for spare parts my old UAZ-469 that was damaged in an accident, for a very long time I could not fit the hood cover into reliable hands. And when he had already come to terms with the fact that this spare part, apparently, would simply have to be scrapped, it occurred to him original idea. “I was just finishing the construction of a shed on the site,” he says, “and there were only a few building materials. I began to figure out what I could use to make a visor over the door, and then the same hood caught my eye. I ultimately adopted him in this capacity.” It turned out, says Maxim, cheap and cheerful. And when he later attached a pair of headlights to the hood (after having previously inserted ordinary fluorescent lamps there), he at the same time solved the problem of lighting the yard at night.

In a similar extravagant way, by the way, some Russian design bureaus, which have long ago adopted world experience in manufacturing, propose to solve the issue of lighting (only for rooms). table lamps And wall lamps from automobile shock absorbers, as well as exhaust gas system pipes.

Springs are elastic structural elements that serve to accumulate or dissipate mechanical energy. They surround us on all sides - under the keys of a computer keyboard, in the car suspension and in lifting mechanism sofa The most common are coil compression springs. There are several ways to make them.

Coil compression springs

Elastic elements can have different spatial shapes. Historically, the first springs mastered by man were leaf springs. You can still see them today - these are springs on heavy-duty trucks. With the development of technology, people have learned to make more compact coil springs that work in compression. In addition to them, spatial elastic elements are also used.

Design Features

During operation, such springs take a load along their axis. In the initial position, there are gaps between their turns. The applied external force deforms the spring, its length decreases until the coils touch. From this moment on, the spring is an absolutely rigid body. As the external force decreases, the shape of the product begins to return to its original shape until it is completely restored when the load disappears.

The main characteristics describing the geometry of the part are:

• The diameter of the rod from which the spring is wound.
• Number of turns.
• Winding step.
• External diameter of the part.

The external shape may differ from cylindrical and represent one of the figures of rotation: cone, barrel (ellipsoid) and others

The winding pitch can be constant or variable. The winding direction is clockwise and counterclockwise.

The cross-section of the turns can be round, flat, square, etc.

The ends of the turns are ground down to a flat shape.

Operating area

The most widely used coil springs are constant outer diameter and constant step. They are used in areas such as

• Mechanical engineering.
• Instrumentation.
• Vehicles.
• Mining industry.
• Appliances.

and in other industries.

Spring requirements

The following properties are required for the work to function effectively:

• high strength;
• plastic;
• elasticity;
• wear resistance.

To ensure the design values ​​of these parameters, it is necessary to correctly select the material, accurately calculate the dimensions, develop and follow the manufacturing technology.

State standards determine the requirements for the manufacture of springs. According to permissible deviations, they belong to one of the accuracy groups:

• less than 5%;
• less than 10%;
• less than 20%.

Strict requirements are imposed on the accuracy of geometry and surface cleanliness.

Products with scratches and other external defects that reduce the resource of the product and its service life do not meet the standard

Material requirements

The strength parameters and fault tolerance of a product are largely determined by the material from which it was decided to be made. Metallurgists distinguish special spring steels in the classification of steels. They have a specific crystal structure, defined as chemical composition, as well as the heat treatment of products. Highly alloyed alloys of increased purity and high metallurgical quality provide high elasticity and ductility and are able to retain their physical and mechanical properties after repeated deformations.

Spring alloys 60S2A, 50HFA and stainless steel 12Х18Н10Т have gained popularity among mechanism designers.

Features of the technology

The technological process for manufacturing elastic elements depends on technical requirements requirements for the design. Making a spring is not as easy as an ordinary part, which should not have special elastic properties. This requires special equipment and equipment.

Winding springs with round The coil is carried out using the following methods:

• Cold. Suitable for small and medium sizes (wire diameter up to 8 mm).
• Hot. For large diameters.

After winding, the elastic elements are subjected to various types heat treatment. During this process, the product acquires the specified properties.

Cold coiling technology without hardening

First you need to do preparatory operations. Before a workpiece is wound from wire, it is subjected to a patenting procedure. It consists in heating the material to the plasticity temperature. This operation prepares the wire for the upcoming change in shape.

During the winding operation the following parameters must be maintained:

• External diameter of the product (for some parts the internal diameter is standardized).
• Number of turns.
• Winding pitch.
• The total length of the part, taking into account subsequent operations.
• Compliance with the geometry of the end turns.

Next, the end turns are ground down to a flat state. This must be done to ensure high-quality support for other structural parts, to prevent their destruction and the spring from slipping out.

The next stage of the technological process is heat treatment. Cold coiling of springs involves only release at low temperatures. It allows you to increase elasticity and relieve mechanical stresses that arise during winding.

It is extremely important to strictly adhere to the design heat treatment schedule, carefully controlling temperature and holding time.

After heat treatment, it is necessary to carry out test and control operations.

Further, if necessary, they can be applied protective coatings, preventing corrosion. If they were applied by galvanic method, the products are reheated to reduce the hydrogen content in the surface layer.

Cold coiling technology with quenching and tempering

The first stages of the technology coincide with the previous process. Changes begin at the heat treatment stage. It is carried out in several stages:

• Hardening. The workpiece is heated to a given temperature and held for 2 to 3 hours. Next, it is subjected to rapid cooling, immersed in a container with mineral oil or saline solution. During the hardening stage, the workpieces must be in a horizontal position. This will avoid deformation
• Vacation. The workpiece is heated to 200-300° and kept for several hours to relieve internal stresses and improve elastic properties.

Further measuring and control operations are also carried out. The workpieces that have passed the inspection are sent for sandblasting to remove scale. If necessary, shot blasting should also be done to increase the strength of the surface layer of the metal.

The process is completed by applying a protective coating.

Hot coiling technology with quenching and tempering

Before winding, the workpiece is heated to plasticity temperature using one of the following methods

• muffle furnace;
• gas-burner;
• high frequency heating.

Heat treatment includes hardening and low-temperature tempering.

Heat treatment schedules are constructed based on the properties of the material and the dimensions of the workpiece.

To make an elastic element, specialized equipment is required. These are winding machines. You can make a part using a regular lathe, but it will require additional equipment with special equipment. Medium and large series are produced on semi-automatic machines that operate with minimal operator intervention. You can also make a spring from wire by hand. This will also require special equipment.

At the next stage of machining, the ends are ground on face grinding machines. For single production or small series, this can be done with a grinding wheel.

Heat treatment is carried out using mandrels that prevent product deformation in specialized furnaces for hardening and tempering. Both operations can be done in a universal oven.

For quality control, load installations and measuring systems. In case of single production, measurements can be made with a universal tool.

Hi all brainiacs! It’s good if the springs you need for your projects can be purchased at the store, but even then, how many of them should you have in stock, and what size and type? In addition, store-bought springs are sometimes suitable, and sometimes it is very difficult to find the right one, so it would be nice to learn how to make them with your own hands and this article will help with this!

Making springs, although it seems somewhat scary, but with the basic tools at hand and simple knowledge, anyone can do-it-yourselfer can do them. In this tutorial I will tell you how to make some springs, first the easy way, and then with the help of more variety of instruments, but also not difficult.

Step 1: Spring Types

The photo shows several types of springs, which I will show you how to make.
On the left is an extension spring, then a compression spring, a conical spring and a torsion spring.

Step 2: Basic Method

In the first and most in a simple way creation brainsprings The tools and materials shown in the photo are used. Using them you can safely make a wide variety of springs, and these are:
- wooden stick with a diameter of 1.2 cm
- piano string
- pliers with an “option” for biting off wire
- hacksaw
- clamp
- screwdriver

Step 3: Preparing the Wooden Stick

We cut off a piece about 13 cm long from a wooden stick, and at one of the ends we make a slot into which the string will be inserted. A stick with a diameter of 1.2 cm is good for this, as it fits perfectly into the screwdriver chuck. Smaller stick brain diameter If it doesn't fit, she won't be able to hold a piano string.

Step 4: Making an Extension Spring

For our purposes, a screwdriver is better suited than a drill, because you can control the rotation speed. To be safe, always use pliers as the string may spring back and injure you!

First, we attach the screwdriver to the workbench with a clamp, then control the screwdriver power button with one hand, and hold it with the other pliers, wind the coils of the spring as much as you need. While feeding the string, we pull it tightly, so the spring will be of better quality.

Step 5: Bend the Ends

Having wound the spring, we bend its ends using pliers and get a finished extension spring. By experimenting in this way, you can obtain springs of various sizes.

Step 6: Compression Spring

To create a spring of this type, you will need a longer stick, but also with a slot at the end. When winding it, you need to keep a certain distance between the turns, which is controlled “by eye”; you may have to practice a little to get a high-quality spring, but brain activity it's quite interesting.

Having made such a spring, I tested it - I put it on a wooden rod, and placed a small block on top. When I pressed it and released it, the block flew to the ceiling like a bullet.

Step 7: Conical Spring

A conical stick can be made using a screwdriver and a grinder.

Using the same brain technology, the string is threaded into the slot of a cone-shaped stick, and then winding occurs. After the spring is wound, its ends are cut off, and that’s it, the conical spring is ready.

To get a high-quality spring cone, I wound two of these, and the second one turned out better.

Step 8: Torsion Spring

To create this spring I was forced to use a slotted brass rod because the wooden one wouldn't hold up.

To make a torsion spring, just wind several coils at the distance you need between them. After this, slightly bending the ends you will get a finished torsion spring.

Step 9: Finally

The photo shows a compression spring I made using a brass rod, and several others in different sizes.

I think this brain technology making springs is not difficult, and I hope you will find it useful in your homemade products. Plus, it will help you save money if you need a lot of springs.

Thank you for your attention and good luck in brain creativity!