spring-tempered stainless wire rings?

Ideas -- you decide if they're bright:

• Yes, you can get SS spring steel. Check
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  The heat treat looks -- interesting.
• Braze (or solder) instead of weld -- depending on the stainless.
• Instead of the usual lamp loop with one wire, how about a double length of finer wire, and no weld/braze/anything? Strength wise it could easily add up to one welded loop, the amount of work required may add up to much less.

O/A would be fine for silverbrazing, which works well on stainless.

A bandsaw blade welder would probably also work.

Buy music wire to form. A home made spring machine for loops as you describe would be pretty easy to fabricate. Do NOT think you can get good consistent results by wrapping them on a spindle. What you need to do is force fee the wire against a die.

ASCII drawings suck but:

Wire moves--> --------------[ wire guide ]-///

You can buy 302/304 SS spring wire(already hardened) in a multitude of sizes from Mcmaster. Look under "music wire" I have used it and it is tough stuff.

Randy

How much of what do you want, let me know...I'll get samples from my wire suppliers.

I have made stainless rings out of 1/8 inch stainless TIG rod. Just bent around a mandrel and silver soldered ( brazed ). The joint is almost invisible. This was from 308 stainless welding rod. I would suggest you get some stainless rod/wire, make a ring or two and then see if you really need something that can be spring tempered. If you really do need spring tempered ( and I doubt it ), 15-5 ph stainless is dead easy to heat treat.

If you do use silver soldering ( brazing ), try to get some silver solder that is recommended for stainless. Ditto the flux. Some stainless does not take silver solder very well, but there are some silver solders with a little nickel in them that are recommended for stainless.

Dan

Grant Erw> I have a sister who makes light fixtures as a cottage industry. She called me

Lamp shades are normally spring tempered to resist being dented. I'll keep your ideas about solder/flux specific to stainless in mind, thanks, Dan.

GWE

snipped-for-privacy@krl.org wrote:

You got me curious. Who makes this device? I may have an app fo something like this. I Googled every combination of words I coul think of but turned up nada.

Joep

-- Joepy

Does she specifically need stainless? I can find several suppliers of lamp rings with a Google search but none of them actually say what their rings are made of:

In the picture provided these look like brass but it doesn't seem likely:

"I'm not grown up enough to be so old!"

Music wire is good for springs, but it is not stainless.

Oh? Check McMasters pn 9495K36 ......Paul

Seems to me you said you have a spot welder. I have the 110V version of the harbor freight welder and it works great for welding stainless wires together in an overlap. What I have in mind is to make a fixture to hold the wire to the tongs so the ends come together when you squeeze the handle. I was playing with the idea of making a fixture for doing bandsaw blades with mine, though I haven't had time to experiment yet. Glenn

I googled

"handheld friction welder brass copper"

and got this:

Ya got me. I even looked at that page yesterday and didn't see the "music wire" note.

OK, some stainless spring wire (e.g. 9495K36 from McMaster) is of "music wire" temper -- but not all "music wire" is stainless. Music wire from Small Parts Inc is not stainless.

Stainless wire is usually work hardened from being drawn to size. So it is not spring temper, but not annealed either. You might look at some 1/16th MIG wire and see if it is stiff enough.

Dan

Grant Erw> Lamp shades are normally spring tempered to resist being dented. I'll keep your