Not Just Springs: Count on Lee Spring for Wire Forms, Fourslide Parts and Stampings

Springs Manufacturer Lee Spring Bends Over Backwards to Meet Your Wire Form Requirements
While most springs have a helix or spiral shape consisting of a group of coils, wire forms do not. Wire Forms are typically parts that are made from wire that is bent to have specific angles and lengths. Some common example of wire forms are paper clips and hangers. The literature holder on the back of your airplane seat is a wire form, too.

Taking the Stress Out of Wire Forms
Wire forms manufactured by Lee Spring are often stress relieved during production; this involves subjecting the wire to low-temperature heat treatment. Heat treatment is a process that uses a combination of heating and cooling operations applied to the wire to achieve desired conditions or properties. Stress relieving wire forms streamlines the overall wire form manufacturing process, lowers total production costs and helps ensure the wire forms’ reliability and consistency of performances.

Lee Spring Offers Broad Based Wire Form Capabilities.
Lee Spring products custom wire forms manufactured to you exact specifications, using almost any wire material or wire shape including rolled round wire, flattened round wire, rectangular wire or shaped wire. Lee Spring can work with wire diameters from .010” (.245 mm) up to .236 “(6.00 mm) with finished wire form lengths up to 60” (1524 mm)

Fourslide Parts: Simple Solutions to Complex Stampings
Lee Spring can reduce part cost, accelerate product delivery, and streamline quality assurance with an integrated stamping and forming operation called fourslide. Fourslide parts production has low to moderate tooling costs and produces accurate repeatable parts. Some examples of parts that would be appropriate for Lee Spring fourslide production include flat springs, clips, brackets, flat terminals as well as other stamped and formed components.

Fourslide Parts: Operations and Advantages
Fourslide parts are metalworking machine tools issued in the high-volume manufacture of small stamped components from metal strip or wire stock. The press can most simply be described as a horizontal stamp press that used cams to control tool motions. The fourslide machines is used an alternative to progressive or transfer stamping operations. The advantage of the fourslide machine is that it can economically complete all of the forming operations needed to produce a part from start to finish.

Lee Spring produces our own quality tooling, minimizing downtime. A fourslide machine generally can produce between 1000 and 4000 finished parts per hour, depending on the number of operations per part. The high speed also usually results in a lower cost per part.

Lee Spring Fourslide Parts: Capabilities and Materials
Fourslide part design is usually limited by the formability of the material used rather that the actually machine capabilities. Generally speaking, the formed characteristics and the bending radii and the most limited factors. Lee Spring fourslide production can accommodate strip widths from .010” (.254 mm) to .500” (12.70 mm) in thickness range from .003” (.076 mm) to .125” (3.175 mm) or wire diameters from .005” (.127 mm) to .187” (4.75 mm) The most commonly used fourslide materials are cold-rolled steel in either low or high carbon, Type 300 and 400 Series Stainless Spring Steels, Copper Alloys including Beryllium Copper, and Bronze Alloys including Phosphor Bronze.

Lee Spring Produces High Quality, High Value Stampings in Any Quantity
Lee Spring is uniquely positioned to provide expert design and production capabilities for stampings. Our experiences with materials commonly used in mechanical springs make us the smart choice for stampings. We understand stamping product design including beam spring, Belleville washers and wave washers. Lee Spring is experienced in stamping process design, e.g. tooling design, press operations and SPC, as well as secondary process design including heat treatment, deburring, plating, and passivation. We assure part quality with stringent product measurement and testing, such as material testing and load testing.

Broad Based Stamping Capabilities
Lee Spring can provide stampings using a wide variety of both ferrous and not ferrous metals, in strip widths up to 3” (76.2 mm) and in strip thickness from .005” (.127 mm) to .062” (1.57 mm). Materials include carbon steel, chrome silicon, chrome vanadium, Series 300 and 400 Stainless Steel, type 17-7 Stainless Steel and other alloys such as beryllium copper, Inconel, phosphor bronze, brass, and Hastelloy.

Go Back to Press Releases, Articles & Whitepapers