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…
In our experience working with numerous customers and their diverse concepts, our representatives often learn that a spring sample is improperly utilized in a design. This misused spring prototype may work for a short time, but it will not perform long-term as well as a properly engineered solution. The following are a few ways springs…
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…
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…
U.S. Fire Damages In 2019, United States fires accounted for $14.8 billion in direct dollars loss, 16,000 injuries, and 3,704 deaths. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the U.S. Fire Administration (USFA), “U.S. fire statistics”, reported 1,291,500 fires for that same year. Overall, the USFA estimated 354,000 incidents were residential building fires and 110,000…
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…
One of the key features of a constant force spring or variable force spring is overall length. The importance of spring length calculation is a discussion that aids designers and engineers when working on a project. Variable Force & Constant Force Spring Design To begin, let’s discuss the attributes of these two springs. Both constant and variable force springs exert a linear force. Both…
We are excited to have Molly Dugan, a high school student and president of team 1218, for a short time working at Vulcan Spring to complete her senior project. As sponsors of the FIRST Robotics, we are thrilled to have the chance to work with her and asked her to give us her unique perspective…
It is late August and the time of the year for pennant races in baseball, pre-season football and of course, the kids go back to school. To celebrate, we thought we’d make this blog into a fun quiz with some multiple choice and true and false questions. The quiz includes industrial and point of purchase…
Too often we find that the springs we manufacture are mistakenly used as stopping mechanisms in a design. This design flaw can occur in all types of springs including Constant Force Springs, Constant Torque Springs and Power Springs.
