Wire forms have infinite uses and a wide variety of shapes and sizes. These forms can be a load bearing link with minimal deflection.  In other cases they can be used as a holder applying a spring tension where a static load is required.

Wire products may also be made to perform as electric resistant units, spring clips, spring clamps, or many other uses. In the case where the working range is short, they may be used in place of conventionally designed springs. This may help lower the cost of the finished product by eliminating other parts. The shapes and uses are limited only by the designer’s imagination.

In the design of wire products the formulas for calculation of wires of the appropriate cross section and the pertinent stress data apply. There are no existing rules or formulas governing their design. Formulas governing material in bending or in torsion may sometimes be applied. In many cases the action the form performs is similar.

Various types of spring steels, non-ferrous materials, and various shaped material are used in these products. Both pretempered and soft spring materials are used in wire forms.

You need to keep in mind the recoil that may happen when forming pretempered material. You must also consider the distortion as a result of heat-treating soft materials. Both of these will cause variation in the free position. The maximum allowable variation in free position needs to be noted in the design.

How the part is to move, if any, needs to be shown in the drawing. Also, as a good safety feature, make all radii of bends as large as possible. This will avoid failure in movement.

If you work with a part maker early in the design stage you may reap considerable cost savings. This is because minor changes in the part design may enable the manufacturer to use his automatic wire bending equipment to make the part complete. Eliminating manual operations lowers the cost considerably.

This is especially the case where the volume is large. Of course, where the volume is small it may be more cost effective and time efficient to make the parts with hand operations either totally or partially.

Tooling is expensive, but today’s CNC machines help eliminate much of this cost. The CNC 3D wire benders make it possible to do a very large variety of shapes with little tooling. This cuts both setup times and tool cost. Now, even short runs are accomplished efficiently on these wire bending machines, rather than by hand.