Small springs - stockist?

[many_methods]

Hi,

Anyone know of any decent stockists of small springs? Ideally cheap ones as I refuse to pay £4.57 per spring (as I was quoted from one firm recently).

The spring in question is 9mm OD, 5mm ID (aka 2mm wire thickness) compression spring and 38-40mm long.

It's for the handle on a table football game so it's not exactly a precision engineering application but does need to work. I only need 2 of them and so I was hoping to find something for a few pence rather than £s. I've looked on RS and a few other sites that I Googled but I've not found anything quite like what I'm after.

I think the game was made in China so perhaps not a standard spring size here in the UK.

Cheers
Rob

 

[rtbcomp]

Buy some piano wire and make a couple

 

[many_methods]

Great idea!

 

[Paul.]

I make a few from time to time, various methods of doing it, here is me making one with a cordless drill,

 

[PhillipM]

Probably something you could cut down in one of those multi-packs from toolstation/screwfix, etc?

 

[Mee]

Easy to make, you get exactly what you want then.

 

[mcostello]

Just ordered 24 springs for a Clausing Colchester lathe. Company said 24 for $14, I said ok,took a month to get them. Got the invoice, nowhere was mentioned $14 a PIECE. $355 total counting shipping. No other lathe to use to make them.

 

[many_methods]

Finally made my springs and thought I'd do a quick write-up in case it might help others out in future. I bought some 2mm piano wire and found something to form it round (an old tent peg was almost exactly the same diameter as the existing spring) and clamped both in the vice. The first attempt I made a bit of a mess of it as I’d not kept an even pressure on the wire at all times. However, the pic below shows my second attempt (on the left) compared to the original spring I was replicating (on the right). I made sure I wound the wire round tightly this time and butted each coil close to the previous one so that the angle of the coil and its diameter remained fairly consistent along the full length of the spring. I did it by hand as the wire was too thick to have been wound using a drill as shown in the video above. I then pulled the spring open using some hefty grips to get a similar gap between the coils as the original spring. Cut either end off with the grinder to get the right length and then filed off the sharp bits. I’ll admit it’s not pretty but it works an absolute treat and, as it’s sat inside a tube, it won’t be seen ever again. Voila! Thanks for the tips. Total cost about £6.50 for the wire inc P&P and I still have a metre of it left for future projects!

Oh, and it's worth noting that you should NOT be tempted to heat piano wire to help it bend as it will lose it's wonderful springiness!

 

[rtbcomp]

Great stuff - thanks for letting us know.

 

[Rocketman]

The spring you made looks good.
You can get a wide range of springs from mould tool ancillary suppliers like Meusburger, DME and Misumi. I would guess the price would be about £2 each for those but the problem is there may be a minimum order price of like £20 so you would need to add a few other things.