Spring Testing

Mechanical Testing Solutions for the Spring Industry

Springs are an integral part of a vast array of products and devices, from automotive and aerospace to medical devices and consumer products. From keyboards to cars, it’s virtually impossible to spend a day in the modern world without interacting with many springs. Springs are designed around specific types of mechanical motion, including tension, compression, and torsion, and they cover a range of forces from fractions of a pound to hundreds of thousands of pounds. ADMET testing machines are ideal for determining the mechanical properties of springs.

Any change in a spring, whether size, shape, or material, will impact the mechanical properties and therefore performance of the device. Mechanical performance needs to be carefully measured during product design and development as well as monitoring in a production environment. Equipment designed to test springs must have the appropriate mechanical motion control and force measurement capability. Engineers who require a material testing system are faced with a wide array of possibilities. The decision around what system to choose should be based on the specific spring application, the cost, and the value to the spring manufacturer of their investment over time.

An example of a fairly simple spring test would be a compression test that determines the free height of the spring, or the length of the spring with a very low force on it, and then compresses the spring to known percentages of that height such as 75%, 50%, etc., and measures the force required to reach those compression percentages. Other tests might require high speed motion over a fraction of the springs mechanical range but over millions of cycles to test for failure, these are typically known as fatigue testing and require a different dynamic mechanical test system.  A buyer of material testing systems in the spring sector shouldn’t compromise on a universal system but instead invest in a system configured to their needs.