Wire Form, Fourslide Parts and Stampings

In addition to world-class spring design and manufacturing capabilities, Lee Spring offers a wide range of capabilities for non-coiled metal fabrications.

Learn About Wire Forms

Most springs have a helix or spiral shape consisting of a group of coils while wire forms normally do not. Wire Forms typically are parts made from wire that is bent to have specific angles and lengths.

Design Engineering

Lee Spring’s World-Class Engineering Team will apply their expertise to assisting you with your Wire Form needs from conception and throughout the design and manufacturing process.

Prototyping

The cost of creating wire form prototypes has considerably decreased thanks to advances in CNC manufacturing technology. Lee Spring’s Engineering Team will work with you to ensure that your wire form parts meet your spatial requirements. We can produce prototypes as part of our concurrent design process. Frequently, prototypes can be changed and produced in minutes, saving time and costly design errors.

Stress-Relieving

Wire forms often are stress-relieved during production. This helps ensure that a part’s dimensions remain within required tolerances. Stress relieving streamlines the overall manufacturing process, lowers total production costs and helps ensure the component’s reliability.

Material Shapes

Lee Spring produces custom wire forms manufactured to your exact specifications. We can produce wire forms out of almost any material shape, including:

• Rolled Round
• Flattened Round
• Rectangular
• Shaped

Dimensional Parameters

• Wire Diameters: .010” - .240” / .254 mm - 6 mm
• Maximum Finished Length: 60.0”/ 1524 mm

Learn About Fourslide Parts

Lee Spring can reduce part cost, accelerate product delivery, and streamline quality assurance with an integrated stamping and forming operation called fourslide. Fourslide production has low to moderate tooling costs and produces accurate repeatable parts.

If you use flat springs, brackets, clips, flat terminals, or any stamped and formed metal components your parts may be natural candidates for fourslide. We can custom tool your intricate metal parts from flat strip material or from drawn or rolled wire.

What is a Fourslide Part?

A fourslide, also known as a four-slide, multislide, multi-slide, or four-way, is a metalworking machine tool used in the high-volume manufacture of small stamped components from strip or wire stock. The press is most simply described as a horizontal stamping press that uses cams to control tool motions. The machine is used as an alternative to progressive or transfer stamping operations.

What is the Fourslide Advantage?

The greatest advantage of the fourslide machine is its ability to complete all of the forming operations required to produce a part from start to finish economically. It can handle certain parts that transfer or progressive dies cannot, since it can manipulate from four axes. Because this process requires less machinery, setups, and handling, the cost of the finished part is reduced.

Lee Spring produces its own quality tooling, minimizing downtime. A fourslide machine can usually produce 1,000 to over 4,000 finished parts per hour, depending on the number of operations per part; this speed also will generally result in a lower cost per part.

Materials

The application of fourslide parts is usually limited by the material stock formability rather than the machine capabilities. Usually the formed characteristics and bending radii are the most limiting factors. The most commonly used materials are:

• Low-Carbon or High-Carbon Cold Rolled Steel
• Type 300 and 400 Stainless Spring Steels
• Copper Alloys, including Beryllium-Copper
• Bronze Alloys, including Phosphor Bronze

Dimensional Parameters

• Strip Width: .010" - .500"/ .254 mm - 12.70 mm
• Strip Thickness: .003" - .125"/ .076 mm - 3.175 mm
• Wire Diameter: .005" - .187"/ .127 mm - 4.750 mm

Learn About Stamping

Lee Spring is uniquely positioned to provide expert design and production capabilities for all stamping processes. Our experience with materials commonly used in mechanical springs makes us the smart choice for:

• Product Design - e.g., Beam Springs, Belleville Washers, Wave Washers, etc.
• Stamping Process Design - e.g., Tooling Design, Press Operations, SPC
• Secondary Process Design - e.g., Heat Treatment, Deburring, Plating, Passivation
• Product Measurement and Testing - e.g. Materials Testing, Load Testing

Customer Support and Manufacturing Capabilities

• CAD assisted Product Design (SolidWorks)
• Short Run and Prototype Production
• CAD assisted Tooling Design (CADKEY), including Progressive Dies
• In-House Tooling Production, including Wire EDM
• Automatic Stamping Presses up to 45 Tons
• In-House Secondary Operations including CNC Machining, Vibratory Deburring, Painting, Welding & Assembly
• Process Validation Procedures including 1st Articles and PPAP's
• Extensive Network of Approved Suppliers (Raw Materials, Special Processes and Production Components)

Materials

For springs or other applications, Lee Spring can provide stampings from a variety of both ferrous and non-ferrous metals, including:

• Low Carbon Steel, Annealed
• Low Carbon Steel, Hard Drawn
• High Carbon Steel, Oil Tempered
• Blue-Tempered Steel
• Chrome Silicon, Oil Tempered
• Chrome Vanadium, Oil Tempered
• Beryllium Copper
• Elgiloy®*
• Hastelloy
• Inconel 600, 718 & X750
• Phosphor Bronze
• Brass
• Stainless Steel, Series 300
• Stainless Steel, Series 400
• Stainless Steel, Type 17-7

Dimensional Parameters

• Strip Width: up to 3" / 76.2 mm
• Strip Thickness: 0.005 - 0.062" / .127mm -1.57 mm

* Elgiloy is a trademark of Elgiloy Ltd. Partnership.