Coiling Technologies, Inc. designs and manufactures springs for the material handling industry.
Custom compression springs, torsion springs, extension springs made from material such as Inconel X750, stainless A286, and other superalloys are widely supplied to the material handling industry.
We provide a consistent high-quality product due to our experienced engineers, modern equipment and manufacturing process that we deploy. Each spring undergoes rigorous testing such that it does not fail even under extreme environmental conditions.
Coiling Technologies, Inc., understands the pressure companies face to reduce inventory costs and trim lead times. With this in mind, we have implemented JIT, Kanban, and Consignment systems to ease the cost burdens that large inventories place on companies today. Contact us to learn more about our material handling services.
Springs for Material Handling FAQs
What does material handling equipment ask of a spring?
Material handling springs live on cycle count. Conveyor take up assemblies, vibratory feeders, sortation diverters, dock levelers, hoists, and clamp and gripper mechanisms cycle continuously through a shift, so a design that is comfortable at 100,000 cycles can be marginal at ten million. Fatigue life, not static load capacity, is the limiting number. Add dust, packaging debris, and in some plants high ambient temperature near ovens and shrink tunnels, and the problem becomes stress level and surface condition rather than simple deflection. Coiling Technologies supplies custom compression, torsion, and extension springs to this industry.
Which materials does Coiling Technologies supply for material handling springs?
Custom compression, torsion, and extension springs made from Inconel X-750, stainless A286, and other superalloys are widely supplied to the material handling industry. Those alloys appear where a carbon steel spring would relax. Inconel X-750 is a precipitation hardened nickel chromium alloy that holds load at temperatures which would take the temper out of spring steel, and A286 is an iron based superalloy with similar staying power at lower cost. Both also resist corrosion in washdown environments. For ambient temperature conveyor and dock equipment, an oil tempered carbon steel spring with a coating is usually the sound economic choice.
When is a superalloy spring worth the cost over coated carbon steel?
Three conditions justify the step up. First, service temperature above roughly 250 degrees F (120 degrees C), where a carbon steel spring loses load through relaxation and the machine drifts out of adjustment. Second, continuous wet or chemical exposure a coating cannot survive, since a corrosion pit becomes a fatigue crack. Third, an application where replacement means tearing down a line, so spring cost is trivial next to downtime. Outside those, coated carbon steel at the same load rating costs a fraction of Inconel X-750 or A286. Coiling Technologies can quote both so the tradeoff is visible before a design is fixed.
How does high cycle count change the design, and where does shot peening help?
At high cycle counts the design stress has to come down, which normally means more wire, more coils, or more space. Shot peening is the way to recover fatigue life without growing the spring. Peening drives a compressive residual stress layer into the wire surface, and because fatigue cracks in springs start at the surface, that layer has to be overcome before a crack can propagate. Coiling Technologies performs shot peen in house. On continuously cycling equipment it is one of the least expensive changes available, and it works best alongside a clean wire surface and enough clearance to prevent coil clash.
Can Coiling Technologies support JIT, Kanban, or consignment stocking?
Yes. Coiling Technologies has implemented JIT, Kanban, and consignment systems specifically because material handling companies face pressure to reduce inventory cost and trim lead times. For a plant where one failed conveyor spring stops a line, the useful arrangement is usually consignment or a Kanban pull on the handful of part numbers that actually cause downtime, with everything else ordered against forecast. Give the engineering team your annual usage and which part numbers are critical, and a release schedule can be built around that rather than around a single large purchase order.
How does Coiling Technologies keep repeat production springs consistent lot to lot?
Consistency comes from keeping the process in one place. Design, coiling, heat treatment, finishing, and inspection all happen in the Houston facility under one ISO 9001:2015 quality management system, with products analyzed before and during production against customer specifications. Heat treatment is the step that most often moves a load rating between lots, so holding it in house rather than sending springs to an outside heat treater removes a variable. Traceability runs from the finished spring back to incoming raw material, which means a load or dimensional drift in one lot can be tied to a specific heat of wire.
