What are old car parts good for? How to make a spring from wire 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 not be a spring of the 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 selecting mandrels of obviously 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 cross-section of the required 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. On 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. The diameter for a homemade spring in this case is selected experimentally.

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 such devices usually do not have temperature sensors, home craftsman You 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 sharpening machine, 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.

A spring that will serve for a long time and perform its tasks as efficiently as possible can be made not only in production. Yes, there is an opportunity to fully comply with the entire production process, all its parameters, and correctly select the characteristics of all technological processes (for example, hardening temperature). However, you can make a simple spring for a mechanism that operates in a gentle mode with your own hands.

To do this you will need the following materials:

• directly a spring and wire of a size suitable for the intended unit;
• gas burner;
• metalworking tools;
• vice;
• household or thermal oven.

Diameter

If the wire diameter is no more than 2 mm, then a spring can be made without using heat treatment. To do this, you need to bend the wire in such a way that it becomes absolutely even, and then wind it with force onto the mandrel.

As for the diameter of the mandrel, it should be slightly smaller than the inner diameter of the spring you want to get. This is necessary to compensate for elastic deformation. Most likely, you will have to unbend and coil the spring several times, try several sizes of mandrels to find the desired diameter. The distance between the coils of the compression spring should be slightly greater than that of the finished spring. The two outer turns should fit well and tightly to each other.

If the diameter of the spring you want to use is source material more than 2 mm, then before you start working with it, it must be annealed. Because without this procedure it is impossible to straighten and wind such a thick wire.

• First of all, you need to choose the right material for the future spring - this is half the success. Alloys of non-ferrous metals (65G, 60HFA, 60S2A, 70SZA, Br. B2, etc.) or special steels (carbon or alloyed) are used in production. If you decide to make the spring yourself, the most suitable material To do this, you will need another spring of the required size (you need to pay attention to the diameter of the wire from which it is made).
• Annealing is best carried out in a special thermal furnace. If you couldn’t find one, then use brick or metal. Light a fire using birch wood and place a spring in the coals. Wait until it is red hot and let it continue to sit in the oven until it cools completely. After this annealing procedure, the wire will become suitable for winding.
• Straighten it and wind it around the mandrel. Do this as described above. When making a spring, wind the coils close to each other.
• Now so that it does not lose its shape. To do this, it must be heated to a temperature of 830-870 degrees and lowered into transformer oil (spindle oil can also be used). Naturally, you will not be able to monitor the desired temperature using instruments, so determine it visually by the color of the heated metal. At a temperature of 830-900°C the metal has a light red color. If such a shade appears, the spring has reached the desired state.
• After hardening, you need to compress the spring until the coils compress and leave it, without releasing it, for 20-40 hours. Then grind off the ends of the spring on a sharpening unit and the product is ready.

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.

Wheels

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 task of preparing meat and vegetable dishes The simplest version of such a barbecue will do just fine on 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. That's why savvy summer resident I placed the next wheel on a pin with a bearing, equipping the structure with a spring and a gear 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 using 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 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 is definitely superior to any of the most beautiful hooks, not to mention simple nails, from where keys can simply be accidentally swept 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 others European countries, says a graduate of 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. Inhabitant Krasnodar region Maxim Ya., selling my old UAZ-469 damaged in an accident for spare parts, 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 inserted ordinary lamps there) daylight), then at the same time I solved the problem of lighting the yard at night.

In a similar extravagance 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 initial position There are gaps between their turns. Attached 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 are cylindrical coil springs of constant outer diameter and constant pitch. They are used in areas such as

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

Next stage technological process- 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. Workpieces that have passed inspection are sent to sandblasting for removing 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 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.

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 a spring with your own hands, prepare the following consumables 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 purposes.

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 instructions

Step 1

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 in this case it 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).

Step 2

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 onto 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.

Step 3

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.