what creates stainless steel 304 wire spring back?

• Apr 9, 2025

• #2

EdStainless

Materials

May 20, 2004

16,253

Are you talking about spring back in forming?
If so then it is likely that you are forming it wrong, not enough over-bend.
It is easy enough to check the tensile strength.

 

Upvote 0 Downvote

• Apr 10, 2025

• #3

mfgenggear

Aerospace

Jan 23, 2008

3,410

pfhelicoil said:

what creates stainless steel 304 wire spring back is it tensile being too high or chemical composition?

Click to expand...

The operator over bends just slightly to mitigate spring back, it depends as Ed said tensile strength or equivalent hardness. .it has to be developed to obtain correct dimensions.

 

Upvote 0 Downvote

• Apr 11, 2025

• #4

weldstan

Materials

Jun 24, 2011

2,789

If you are refering to wire, it is most likely cold drawn and easily in the 1/2 hard or higher condition and a very high yield strength. It cannot readily be additionally cold formed.

 

Upvote 0 Downvote

• Apr 11, 2025

• #5

EdStainless

Materials

May 20, 2004

16,253

Hard SS wire is regularly formed on various spring forming machines.
If you are accustom to forming steel spring wire the SS will have more spring back.

 

Upvote 0 Downvote

• Apr 11, 2025

• #6

mfgenggear

Aerospace

Jan 23, 2008

3,410

EdStainless said:

Hard SS wire is regularly formed on various spring forming machines.
If you are accustom to forming steel spring wire the SS will have more spring back.

Click to expand...

Additionally just add to Ed's comment.
It also depends on the geometry of the component. And how it is manufactured.

 

Upvote 0 Downvote

• Apr 12, 2025

• #7

TugboatEng

Marine/Ocean

Nov 1, 2015

11,807

And the heat treat of the wire. Use annealed wire if you want less spring back.

 

Upvote 0 Downvote

• Apr 15, 2025

• #8

btrueblood

Mechanical

May 26, 2004

10,009

Yes, a higher tensile strength will mean more spring back. Fully annealed wire will spring back less than 1/2 hard or full hard or spring temper wire. As Ed said, stainless wire also springs back more than carbon steel wire due to differences in work hardening between the two materials.

 

Upvote 0 Downvote

• Apr 15, 2025

• #9

EdStainless

Materials

May 20, 2004

16,253

Just a word of caution.
The terms 1/4 hard, 1/2 hard, full hard and so on only apply to flat rolled product.
Wire has it's own specifications (such as ASTM A313) and the specified tensile strength is a function of the wire diameter.
We used to draw 304ELI to 500ksi tensile, but it was 0.004" diameter.

 

Upvote 0 Downvote

• Friday at 5:01 PM

• #10

WKTaylor

Well-known member

Sep 24, 2001

4,140

Ed... how common is it to use 304 in-lieu-of 302 SStl for spring/music wire... or is it no big deal [same-same]?

 

Upvote 0 Downvote

• Friday at 5:21 PM

• #11

EdStainless

Materials

May 20, 2004

16,253

They are interchangeable unless you need 302 class 2 which is stress relieved.
Stress relieving high strength wire generally increases the UTS.
The alloys listed in A313 fall into three broad groups.
305, 316, 321, and 347 are slightly lower strength (for 0.060" about 250ksi)
17-4PH and 455 have their own properties.
All of the rest of the 200 and 300 series alloys have their own tables also, but they are all very similar with a UTS of about 295ksi for 0.060" wire.

 

Upvote 0 Downvote