The coils of a clock spring are formed by winding spring wire around a cylinder into helically shaped metal springs. There are two coil types for clock springs: tight coils and open coils. Clock springs with tight coils are, in normal applications, completely without friction. Tight coil clock springs are often used as locking mechanisms. Read More…
Leading Manufacturers
R & L Spring Company
Lake Geneva, WI | 262-249-7854R&L Spring Company manufactures custom spring and wire formed components for industries such as powersports, automotive, medical devices, and general industrial. Products include compression, extension, and torsion springs, as well as rings, wire forms, fourslide components, and long coils. Wire diameters available from .001" to .750" in both shaped wires and flat stocks. Their experienced team is able to meet the most demanding parts specifications. IATF16949 and ISO9001 certified.
Stanley Spring and Stamping Corporation
Chicago, IL | 773-777-2600At Stanley Spring and Stamping Corporation we have experience in raw materials and metal fabrication. We are a Midwest manufacturer who is part of the American business community. Our coil springs are made from the highest quality material available. Our production ranges from a few prototypes to over fifty million parts. We provide the best quality in the industry.
Tollman Spring Company, Inc.
Bristol, CT | 860-583-1326Founded in 1945, Tollman’s expert engineering staff stands ready to work directly with your designers to meet customized spring design and cycle life requirements and achieve maximum performance of your products. In addition to helping you with the pre-production design of new parts, our engineering and design experts can help improve the performance of your existing products. Tollman’s up-front involvement in the design of customer products saves time and money.
Plymouth Spring Company, Inc.
Bristol, CT | 860-584-0594Plymouth Spring Company, founded in 1959, has continued to expand and grow through new technologies and attention to details to serve an ever larger customer base. Plymouth Spring completed the acquisition of the assets of the Bristol Spring Manufacturing Company and has integrated much of Bristol Spring’s highly skilled workforce, equipment and manufacturing capabilities of compression springs, torsion springs & extension springs into our existing facility.
Gilbert Spring Corporation
Chicago, IL | 800-860-6031Established in 1964 and now in our third generation of ownership, Gilbert Spring Corporation has remained dedicated to not only providing the utmost quality in our products but also offering excellent customer service and on-time delivery with short lead times. Our Secondary department can produce complex Springs and Wire/Strip Forms not suited for machine operations, and our on-site tooling department gives us the ability to quickly adapt to customer’s needs.
Ajax Wire Specialty Company, Inc.
Hicksville, NY | 855-966-2529At Ajax Wire, in addition to manufacturing a growing list of stock springs, we can produce springs to your specifications, samples or drawings in short or long runs. We also offer several assortments that come with cabinets and display boards. Compression springs, extension springs and torsion springs are examples of our products. Springs have been our only business for more than 85 years, Call us today!
Clock Springs - All-Rite Spring CompanyClock springs with open coils are the most common type and must be mounted in housings. Open coil clock springs offer a low increase of force and are often used in applications such as retractable reels, retracting seat belts, mechanical motors, tape measures, timing devices, vehicle suspensions, galvanometers and electrical switches.
Typical industries that utilize clock springs include military, medical, automotive, electronics, agricultural, commercial, industrial and utilities. Clock springs are most commonly made from a certain type of spring steel referred to as either blue steel or clock spring steel. Blue steel is tempered and polished spring steel, which has a very high carbon content and is generally dark blue in color.
Clock Springs - All-Rite Spring CompanyClock springs consist of a flat coil strip and are wound, either tightly or openly, similar to a snail shell in that each coil is nested within a larger coil. Flat coil strips provide a stronger spring than round wire, although round wire is more commonly used in springs. Often, clock springs are wound and mounted on an arbor, which is a piece of round stock that has one end formed to accept the inside end of the clock spring, while the outside end is attached to a stationary post.
The power spring is also housed within a cylindrical casing, or barrel. The clock spring is wound by turning the arbor, but it drives the object’s movement by the barrel; this arrangement allows the clock spring to continue powering the object while it is being wound. Winding the object turns the arbor, which tightens the clock spring, wrapping it closer around the arbor.
Clock springs are most commonly formed through the cold rolling process. A type of roll forming, cold rolling utilizes roll forming machines, which consist of sequences of calenders, or roller die pairs, positioned both above and below the metal coil that is being formed. As the metal moves through the machine, the rollers bend the material along the linear axis, pressing the metal into a more uniform grain flow while shaping the metal into flat coil strips.
Cold rolled clock springs are created at temperatures below the recrystallization point of the metal. The cold rolling process increases the tensile strength of the metal. The clock springs are then annealed, or made softer through heating, so that they can be wound or coiled. Next, the clock spring is heat treated in order to reduce stresses and fractures and thus further strengthen the spring.