Hi!
I've been in the spring and wire forming industry all my adult life- since 1970! My gosh, that seems like a long time ago! I started on the loading docks, went to spring grinding, spring coiling (compression), became foreman of the coiling department and kept on going. After about 10 years I went to another company that taught me estimating and the basics of spring design. I built on this and was very lucky to be tutored by gentlemen on all the nuances of spring design for several years.
This lead to an opportunity to become a sales engineer for a spring company to the "Big Three" (remember this was many moons ago just at the beginning of the Japanese invasion). I spent many years doing this and even acquired a patent on a spring assembly design that kept a division of my company going for several years.
I then went into management and had the opportunity to run a few different divisions of spring companies. What an experience! No wonder managers enjoy a few cocktails after work!
I also had the opportunity to work for some machine suppliers to the spring and wire forming industry. This offered me the opportunity to visit spring makers all over the world. I must say this was one of the most enlightening opportunities I had. Spring makers, as I must assume any manufacturer when confined to their own company for instruction, can become quite self contained and suffer a lot for lack of knowledge. My position of world travel enabled me to see a variety of ways to attack problems. For example, what one company would say is impossible to make, I saw being manufactured at another company. What one company would say would take a week to set up, I saw accomplished in a few hours at another company.
Now, I hope to give back to my industry the knowledge I've acquired in my lifetime. Better yet, I should not call it knowledge, as it is not new ideas that I thought up, it is what I have seen a world of spring makers doing. The internet now provides the medium to easily do this. I hope, once I learn how Wikipedia works, to be able to contribute to the articles placed here in my field of expertise.
Burr Free