For nearly 8-decades, we have been a unique centre of excellence for spring technology, advising and supporting businesses in every aspect of the spring supply chain.
We help companies design and manufacture safe, effective, and reliable springs through our software, failure analysis and problem-solving, testing services, professional training programs and membership.
Our dedicated team brings unrivalled experience to each facet of our business—with a specialisation in springs, we offer technical insight and expertise that no other organisation can offer, putting us right at the heart of the global spring making industry.
Software
Spring Calculator Professional (SCP) is the world’s leading spring design software. Already used by hundreds of companies globally, SCP has simpli
fied a large portion of spring design and validation, helping to highlight potential problems before a spring is even made.
The extensive fatigue life and relaxation predictions built into the software are unsurpassed and invaluable for users to validate springs for use under real-world constraints.
SCP can quickly evaluate the impact of changes in materials, design standards and spring parameters. Analysing this impact is essential to manufacturers, design engineers and end-users across the globe.
We’ve built over 70 years of research and data right into SCP, giving you access to an extensive range of material performance data and fatigue life and relaxation predictions. Using this data, the software can predict the behaviour of a spring under different environmental and operating conditions. Furthermore, it allows a design to be honed to fit real-world constraints, such as limited space.
We offer free trials at: www.ist.org.uk/software
Failure Analysis
Springs are often critical components in a vast number of products across many sectors, including medical, oil and gas, and transportation. As such, failure in service is at best considered unacceptable and at worst catastrophic. We believe it is essential to understand how a spring failed and why to minimise the risk of future failures.
Until a spring has failed, the actual impact is never fully understood in how vital a role these components play. Therefore, spring failure not only needs to be understood by determining the mechanism and the root cause of that failure, but recommendations need to be made to reduce the risk of failure occurring again.
We’ve performed failure analysis on wave springs used in oil and gas valves, nested springs in train bogies, commercial vehicle leaf springs, engine valve springs, medical auto-injector springs and Tuk Tuk suspension springs, to name just a few.
We combine a range of high tech and low tech tools to form our findings, from simple observations by eye to SEM and EDX analysis. Detailed customer reports outline the underlying cause of a product’s failure and provide recommendations to prevent reoccurrences.
If you have a spring problem, you can start with a free consultation here: www.ist.org.uk/stop-spring-failures.
Consultancy
Although consultancy is a broad service that we offer, spring design and validation is one of the most common consultancy topics we deal with. Typically, this starts with a spring not performing as the designer intended. In cases such as these, consultancies often involve; testing to understand the problem better, releasing technical information so the customer can understand why the issues are occurring and suggesting changes to the design or tolerancing parameters so the spring will operate as expected.
The consultancy work we perform is incredibly varied and can range from simply providing technical information to detailed reports outlining spring design, test results, operation and failure. The one constant factor is that if our customer has a problem, we aim to solve it.
For professional advice on any spring, problem email us at info@ist.org.uk.
Professional Training
We offer a range of 3-hour training modules all about key spring topics, including spring design, spring materials and failure analysis. We also have a comprehensive 2-day course, Practical Spring Design, which covers: basic and advanced compression spring design, extension and torsion spring design, design using Spring Calculator Professional software, application-specific material selection and spring failure and prevention. These are all open courses delivered online and anyone, worldwide is welcome to join.
For something a little more unique, we can deliver in-house training to you anywhere in the world and tailor the course to suit your requirements. You can choose from various elements, including material selection, basic and advanced design, manufacturing technology, SCP software, and failure and prevention. We’ll work with you, so the course meets your company’s training needs/requirements.
So whether you would like to help your staff with continual professional development or brush up on your skills, we have plenty to choose from at www.ist.org.uk/training.
For more information on any of our products or services, please head to www.ist.org.uk.
