Spring Design Tips and Tricks

Designing The Next Spring Design Training Courses

By Gary Van Buren

SMI has held spring design classes over the past couple of years, starting with classes on basic spring information and material information. These two fundamental classes (101 and 103) are available for free at SMI’s website, www.smihq.org, and are great for new hires, sales reps or even existing employees who do not work on the shop floor.

The next three offerings, Compression Design 201, Extension Design 202 and Torsion Design 203, were all developed for the new engineer. These classes run through a seven-step design process: “Define the Problem,” “Select Spring Configuration,” “Select Material,” “Select a Stress Level,” “Design to Optimize,” “Check the Design,” and “Specify.”

We held our first class in person at the 2019 SMI Metal Engineering eXpo in Pittsburgh with 20 students. The next offering was held in California, and then the pandemic hit. All the in-person classes were postponed or canceled. We had to shift gears and take the physical classroom to a virtual classroom. For me this was both good and bad. Bad because I could no longer see the faces of the students to know if I should repeat myself or if they are understanding the current lesson. The good is the fact that more people can attend without having to travel a long distance, which saves on expenses for SMI and its students. I personally benefited by becoming more comfortable online, and the same can be said for the whole technical committee.

Work on the next two classes (301 Springs — Fatigue and 304 Springs — Dimensioning, Tolerancing and Testing) has been in progress since early 2021. In addition to me, the 301 design team includes Al Mangels, Jason Sicotte, Bert Goering, Rick Gordon and Todd Piefer.

The 304 team is comprised of Tim Zwit, Gene Huber, Jr., Rick Gordon, Bert Goering, George Fournier, Tom Featherstone, Sanchit Salunkhe and me. Gary Van Buren is the technical advisor for SMI. He is available to assist members with

These two teams are made up of engineers who take time out design and problem-solving issues, including of their busy schedule to put together an informative program spring design and technical consultation. to help better our industry. I also commend the companies they work for, because they allow their employees to devote work hours to support these courses. Most of these engineers have In addition, he teaches SMI’s spring design training courses. Van Buren is an engineering manager with more than 25 years of experience in the spring industry. He has extensive years of experience in the spring industry, while some are new. experience in compression, extension and One of the newest engineers, Sanchit Salunkhe of Michigan torsion spring design, as well as customer Spring and Stamping, provided his thoughts on being part of the 304 Dimensioning, Tolerancing and Testing team. service. Van Buren can be reached at gvanburen2@gmail.com or 440-206-6129.

“It was an honor to work with the SMI committee on the 304 module,” said Sanchit. “As a newcomer to the spring industry I was principally learning on the job, and then I had the privilege to work on the presentation for the compression spring portion. We decided on the agenda for the presentation at the first meeting and used existing documents to populate the content.” Sanchit further stated, “The most helpful documents that we referenced were DIN EN 15800, SAE HS795, and the SMI booklet for tolerancing and testing. We met weekly to review and critique the presentation content. We would go through the content and allow each person to say whether the statements on the screen align with what they have observed during the actual manufacturing process. Some interesting points came out of this, and documents were

The technical committee is updated accordingly. “I found this to be a fulfilling pleased with the way these classes experience from both a knowledge have come together and we thank and career perspective. Because of the opportunity to be a part of everyone who has participated. these discussions, I was able to gain

We extend an invitation to a much deeper understanding of springs. What stood out most to me anyone who would like to join was that, even though I was workthe committee. We can use your ing with titans of the SMI industry such as Gene Huber Jr., Gary opinions. In return, you will have Van Buren, Rick Gordon, George the opportunity to network with Fournier (and more) who live and breathe springs, my thoughts were a team full of people who possess given equal importance. It was a great deal of information. nothing short of a blessing,” concluded Sanchit. The technical committee is pleased with the way these classes have come together and we thank everyone who has participated. We extend an invitation to anyone who would like to join the committee. We can use your opinions. In return, you will have the opportunity to network with a team full of people who possess a great deal of information.