Tungsten springs
Tungsten springs
(OP)
Can tungsten wire be shaped to make springs? If so what would the life span be compared to a music wire spring?
Thanks for any help.
Thanks for any help.
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RE: Tungsten springs
RE: Tungsten springs
Here is one site that mentions W springs
http://www.hytechspring.com/wire-forms.html
On personal note I've wound several coils to use as a stylus on Thermal Paper Fathometers. The extended wire, .002 about 1" long, under went a lot flexing and I never had any reports of one breaking. It fact they didn't ever were out
RE: Tungsten springs
Is it possible that Tungsten wire would give me these results in maybe .035"-.040" diameter?
RE: Tungsten springs
RE: Tungsten springs
RE: Tungsten springs
Here is one source you could try - they usually deliver pretty quickly on items that I have ordered in the past:
http://www.smallparts.com/products/descriptions/TW.cfm
According to this site:
http://www.tungsten.com/mtstung.html
the tensile strength varies between 100,000 and 500,000 psi. My guess is that one factor affecting the variance would be the cold work effects of drawing the wire. If you annealed it after drawing - say by heating above the recrystallization temperature - it would presumably become softer. However, unlike the case of iron-carbon alloys, I doubt if heating it up and quenching it would do much good in regard to restoring the hardness - but you would have to talk to a metallurgically knowledgeable person on that.
RE: Tungsten springs
Secondly, good tungsten wire filaments (GE 218 wire, for instance), have a potassium dopant. After winding, the strength of the wire is greatly increased by recrystallization (heating in vacuum or in hydrogen to 2000 to 2200 deg. F). The potassium migrates to the grain boundaries of the alloy, and provide an anti-slip mechanism. The cold strength as well as high-temp. creep strength of the wire are both improved greatly by the above treatment. It is also used on the W/3Re wire, mainly to "repair", by solid annealing, any micro-cracking generated during winding.
Hope that helps.
Ben T.