Spring Heat Treatment Services
Heat treatment is routinely performed on springs and wire form products to transform the material's microstructure, creating optimized, high-performance components that can reliably withstand significant stresses and deformation profiles under extreme operating conditions.
Springs are routinely subjected to additional engineered heat treatment after the forming process to optimize critical mechanical properties of the spring. Heat treatments can refine your spring’s strength, ductility, toughness, and fatigue resistance to create a spring that meets your load, deformation, and cycle lifetime requirements, even in the most demanding applications.
Century Spring proudly offers secondary heat treatment options tailored to your spring type, size, and material, including hardening and tempering, stress relief, and annealing, to enhance the performance and operational lifetime of your spring, even in the most demanding mechanisms and assemblies.
What Is Spring Heat Treatment?
At a high level, heat treatment is a generic term for a process in spring and wire form manufacturing that refers to a controlled heating and cooling process performed according to a strict set of prescriptive processes and procedures. Spring steel heat treatment is typically performed after the wire forming process and is conducted in a furnace for precise temperature control during both heating and cooling. As mentioned before, heat treatment is used to alter the mechanical properties of the underlying material in the wire form, creating a spring optimized for specific load, deformation, and life requirements.
Typical spring and wire form heat treatment options include hardening and tempering, annealing, and standalone stress relief heat treatments. A spring that has undergone optimized heat treatment will be well-equipped to deliver reliable, predictable performance in the most demanding mechanisms, even under extreme temperature fluctuations and high-load cycles.
Our Heat Treatment Capabilities
All heat treatment processes require precision, temperature-controlled furnaces, and advanced material handling equipment to ensure that springs receive the prescribed heating profile, the correct time at temperature, and proper quenching technique. Century Spring has invested in advanced process controls to ensure that the hardening, tempering, and annealing processes are carefully monitored and maintained, providing reliable and stable performance and control.
Century Spring proudly offers the following spring heat treatments, optimized for your spring type, size, and material. We also offer numerous National Aerospace and Defense Contractors Accreditation Program (NADCAP) certified heat treatment options. This accreditation is considered the gold standard in heat treatment certifications, guaranteeing our proficiency in heat treatment process controls and outcomes.
Spring and Wire Form Heat Treatments | ||
Type of Heat Treatment | General Method | Resulting Properties |
Hardening & Tempering | Hardening
Tempering (performed after Hardening)
| Hardening:
Tempering:
|
Annealing |
|
|
Stress Relief Heat Treatment |
(compared to other heat treatments)
|
|
Specialized spring hardening treatments, such as case hardening, can also be specified for spring and wire form components. Such a technique involves adding nitrogen or carbon to the atmosphere during the heating process to increase surface hardness while retaining the ductility of the material under the hardened surface layer.
Furthermore, it is essential to grasp the subtle distinction between annealing and stress-relief heat treatment. Annealing is a more common heat treatment for spring and wire form products because it increases spring ductility and reduces hardness. Comparatively, stress relief heat treatment involves heating the spring to a lower temperature. It is only used to improve the grain structure of the underlying material and relieve residual stresses induced in the material during the wire forming process.
Benefits of Heat-Treating Spring Steel
In the language of spring performance, the key benefits of heat treatment are centered around the following areas.
- Increasing the spring’s strength: At a high level, the heat treatment process alters the grain structure of the spring material in a manner that allows the material to resist larger loads and deformations before fracturing.
- Increasing the spring’s hardness: Heat treatments alter the atomic structure at the material’s surface, hardening it and making it more resistant to dents, scratches, and other surface damage.
- Increasing the spring’s elasticity: Heat treatment can also be designed to increase the magnitude of elastic deformation that a spring can withstand. This means the spring can return to its original shape when higher loads are applied.
The effect of these physical property changes means the following:
- Reduce the risk of premature overload failures: The increased tensile strength and elasticity (and toughness) reduce the risk of material yielding and also outright fracture of the spring.
- Increased fatigue resistance: Depending on the application, springs may need to endure thousands or even millions of load and deformation cycles. Heat treatment repairs atomic defects in the crystalline structure of the material, thereby minimizing the formation of cracks from such internal defects. As stated previously, increasing the hardness of the spring prevents the formation of surface dents and cracks, which are vulnerable locations for crack initiation and surface corrosion. Together, this means that a heat-treated spring is far less susceptible to cyclic crack growth that leads to fatigue failure under repeated loading.
Materials We Work With
The most common Types of Spring Materials that can be heat-treated include the following:
- High Carbon Steels
The most common high-carbon spring material is called music wire, which is a hardened, tempered steel. Another notable spring steel is oil-tempered high-carbon steel. These cost-effective heat treatment adds fatigue resistance and enable the spring steel to retain its strength at elevated temperatures. - Alloy Steels
Alloy Steels derive their name simply because they are alloyed with more than one element. They are well-suited for a wide range of heat treatments, including case hardening and annealing. Stainless Steels
Stainless steel contains chromium, nickel, and molybdenum as alloying elements, which form a protective oxide surface layer that provides excellent corrosion resistance compared to ordinary steel springs.The most common heat treatment for stainless steel springs is precipitation hardening. This process involves controlled heating, rapid quenching, and then reheating (a process known as aging) to increase the yield strength of the spring.
Inconel, Elgiloy®, and Speciality Alloys
Nickel-based alloy spring materials feature nickel as the primary element, along with substantial quantities of other alloying elements, such as chromium or molybdenum.These high-strength, corrosion-resistant alloys retain their high-strength properties at extremely high temperatures, and, as such, are typically reserved for demanding applications. Such alloys require highly specialized annealing and aging heat treatments to maintain the precise chemical composition from which their physical properties are derived.
Industries Served
Century Spring’s heat treatments enhance spring performance in spring applications that span a broad range of industries. For example, aerospace electronic grade springs rely on heat-treated springs to prevent corrosion, and automotive engine valve springs require specialized heat treatments to maintain reliable performance under high temperatures.
Our high-quality, reliable stock and custom spring treatment options for applications in such industries make us your trusted partner for any application.
FAQs About Spring Heat Treatment Services
What is the purpose of heat treating a spring?
The primary purpose is to favorably alter the physical properties of the spring material to achieve a higher strength and surface hardness. Heat treatment can also relieve internal crystalline defects and alleviate the stresses induced in the material's microstructure during the coil forming and shaping manufacturing processes. The result of spring heat treatment is a spring that is more resistant to loads, wear, and fatigue deformation.
How does spring steel heat treatment improve durability?
Heat treatment alters the crystalline structure of the spring material through a controlled heating and cooling process. These microstructural changes enhance spring durability in two ways. First, heat treatment increases the surface hardness of the spring, making it resistant to surface dents and scratches from which cracks can initiate, and surface corrosion takes hold. Secondly, heat treatment increases the yield and ultimate strength of the spring, making it able to withstand larger loads and displacements.
Can you heat treat custom spring shapes and sizes?
Yes. Custom spring designs can receive heat treatments specifically tailored to the spring geometry and material. Century Spring offers comprehensive spring design and consultation services to help you determine the optimal heat treatment for your specific application.
What types of furnaces or systems are used in the spring heat treatment process?
Heat treatment systems used for spring and wire form product applications can be broadly categorized into two types: batch and continuous furnaces. Batch furnaces heat products in discrete loads or batches, while a continuous furnace receives a constant feed of parts delivered via an industrial conveyor system. There are numerous subtypes of furnaces, such as box and roller hearth furnaces, that fall into these broad categories. Specialized heat treatment furnaces, such as vacuum chambers, may be required for specialized heat treatments. The precise industrial configuration of the process primarily depends on the material, type of heat treatment, and production volume.
How do I know if my spring requires heat treatment?
First, carefully consider the loading and deformation requirements of your design application as well as the corrosion and fatigue resistance your spring might require. Then, after you have selected a spring geometry and material that meets your design requirements, consider whether additional strength, wear resistance, or durability may be necessary. For example, your spring may operate in a safety-critical mechanism that would benefit from additional fatigue resistance to prevent failure if the actual cycles in use exceed your design calculations or prevent yielding or outright fracture under an unexpected overload.
How can I ensure reliable spring performance when selecting a spring for my application?
In general, you can enhance the longevity of your spring by considering the following during your selection process.
- Optimize your Design: To minimize spring stress during deformation, consider using a smaller spring with larger wire diameters or explore ways to reduce the design loads of your application.
- Consider Material and Environmental Protection: Select suitable materials and treatments that are compatible with specific environmental conditions.
- Cyclic Loading: If your application involves significant dynamically oscillating loads, you should verify that the operating frequency is significantly lower than the spring's natural frequency to prevent resonance issues.
How do I request a design consultation for my project?
You can complete our Contact Form to help us direct your consultation question to the correct team. If you require immediate assistance, speak directly with our customer service team on our dedicated phone line at 800-237-5225.
Depending on the level of service you require, we can assist you in selecting a spring from our extensive catalog of stock spring options or provide comprehensive design and manufacturing consulting services to help you design an optimized spring solution tailored to your specific application.
Why Choose Century Spring
Trusted Spring Manufacturing Partner
As the most trusted name in spring manufacturing, Century Spring is a quality-first, ISO 9001-certified supplier of springs and wire-formed products, specializing in both stock and custom springs. With an established industry presence and a proven track record, our large-scale production facility enables us to maintain a substantial inventory of high-quality stock and custom springs and wire form products.
We also offer prototyping services for custom heat treatments, which can be quickly scaled to full volume production runs, minimizing total project development time.
Our secondary processing methods, including heat treatment expertise, benefit from our product development expertise in aerospace, automotive, and military markets.
Our experienced product engineers, knowledgeable product quality team, and skilled manufacturing personnel always deliver the highest quality products to you faster than our domestic and international competitors. We offer rapid delivery on over 40,000+ stock springs, available to ship today, because we understand your design scheduling constraints.
Our products are always made in the USA.
What Our Customers Are Saying
“Terrific customer service agents who are willing to research and find the answer if they don't know. Nice email updates and quick product delivery.”
“I am surprised that a big company like yours would work with us little guys. And Thank You because we don't have another source for springs.”
“The website works really well, that is very important to me to find what I need quickly and accurately.”
Get In Touch
Contact Information
Contact us directly today, and let our experts resolve all your technical and sales questions. We can also guide you through spring designs and heat treatment configuration options for any spring application.
If you require immediate assistance, you can speak directly with our team on our dedicated customer service line at 800-237-5225.
Request a Quote and Consultation
You can always Request a Custom Quotation to partner with us in designing a custom spring solution if you can’t locate the spring you need within our extensive stock catalog.
We will follow up with a customized quotation and recommendations, and we will be happy to address any additional questions you may have.
Ready to Get Started?
Click the button below to request a quote and start your journey with Century Spring.