There may not be life on Mars, but there are Vulcan Springs

With expeditions to Mars at the forefront of future space exploration, it’s exciting to look to the past with Vulcan Spring’s involvement with the first spacecraft to successfully land on Mars, the Viking 1 Orbiter and Mars Lander. “Mars tugs at the human imagination like no other planet. With a force mightier than gravity, it…

Understanding the role of springs in the James Webb Space Telescope

Dramatic. Magnificent. Awe-inspiring. Three words to accurately describe the images of our universe being captured by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Having a small but critical role in the success and creation of the JWST with our constant force springs, Vulcan Spring and Manufacturing eagerly awaits each exciting update from NASA. “The Webb telescope is the…

A Deep Look into Space: Constant Force Springs in NASA’s JWST Sunshield

In collaboration with the Aerospace & Defense industries, we are proud to announce our small, yet critical contribution to NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) Sunshield project. Set to replace the Hubble Telescope, JWST is said to be six times larger and 100 times more powerful. The Hubble Telescope has provided humankind with remarkable knowledge…

A Spring Manufacturer’s Collaboration in a COVID-Specific Medical Application

Battling COVID-19 One Spring at a Time The news came as a shock to businesses of all sizes and specialties. Here in Pennsylvania, on Thursday, March 19th, 2020 – just hours after business closing time – operations were ordered to cease. For sure, a familiar story to many. We were left wondering how a business…

Design Study: Spool-Mounted Constant Force Springs Used for Dampened Linear Motion

  Design Principles  There are several critical principles that influence the design of a linear motion application when powered by a spool-mounted, dampened constant force spring. These principles support the robust and consistent performance of products in a variety of applications such as automotive and aircraft interiors, industrial machine components, and many other user-interface applications.   The sample assembly shown above will be referenced as an example of various design principles detailed below. This example assembly…

Designing Constant Force Springs

Why are there blank squares in the Design Guide? You can see that there are two areas (shown in gray) in the chart where the force data is purposely left empty.    We will discuss some of the reasoning behind the empty spaces. The top right area of the chart represents thin material thickness and wide…

8 Steps to a Constant Force Spring Design

Vulcan Spring has put together 8 steps to help you make some initial design calculations on your constant force spring. In addition to this article, our design guide is available for download online and will provide you with charts and more detailed information. Select Material – Most of the flat steel springs that Vulcan Spring produces…