Posted to News on 24th May 2012, 00:00
A better spiral spring
William Hughes announces that it has extended its range of springs to include spiral springs. Rather than using soft wire which is then hardened and tempered to give the required characteristics, William Hughes uses CNC technology to process spring hard wire into the required shape. The spring is then stress relieved and finished, resulting in a spring that is faster to produce, has a lower cost, looks better and has improved performance characteristics.
>Spiral springs - or clock springs as they are sometimes inaccurately known - are a type of torsion spring. The use of profiled or square wire, allows high performance parts to be engineered for applications in awkward or confined spaces. Typical applications include the electrical and automotive industries, for example seat folding mechanisms. The difference between a spiral spring and a clock spring is that a spiral spring has a few coils that don't touch each other, generally delivering less than one full rotation, whereas a clock spring - which can also be made by William Hughes - has many coils, usually fitting into a confined casing.
>William Hughes is a leading manufacturer of springs, bent wire-forms and assemblies and the introduction of spiral springs takes full advantage of the company's experience, wire bending skills and state of the art wire forming machinery. CNC technology means that tooling for new springs can be manufactured more quickly and at a lower cost. Even small batch quantities can be quickly and economically produced for prototyping or low production runs.
>Solving problems for its customers is a key attribute of William Hughes, making full use of the extensive design and engineering facilities available at its Stalbridge, Dorset factory. When a solution is agreed with the customer, William Hughes will manufacture high quality parts using its large capacity production plant, which is one of the most sophisticated in the world.
>The William Hughes product range includes compression, tension and torsion springs in many bespoke configurations, wire forms, PCB test points and spring wire. Stringent quality checks to ISO 9001:2008, TS 16949 and AS 9100, combined with the latest design, production and distribution techniques ensure continuity of supply, rapid delivery and competitive prices across the range.
