Subject: slinky

From: [email-masked] (Mark Kinsler )
Date: Tue, 11 Apr 1995 21:57:34 GMT

My mathematics professor has taken to fooling with a steel "Slinky" spring
toy at his desk.  We were looking at it today and the question came up:  
How are these things made?  (Prof said, "well, you'd start with a steel 
cylinder...").  The slinky consists of a flat-wound spring of fairly 
tough steel plated with what looks like cadmium.   
  I was speculating that the slinky might be made as follows: You'd start
with a round steel wire with the temper let down so it's soft.  Then wind
it into a spring and run it through rollers to give the wire a rectangular
cross-section and simultaneously work harden it to give a nice hard spring
wire.  Then you'd plate it. 
  Does anyone know if this sounds correct?  
                             M Kinsler

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From: [email-masked] (Richard T Wurdack)
Date: 12 Apr 1995 00:13:43 -0700

Mark Kinsler ([email-masked]) wrote:
:   I was speculating that the slinky might be made as follows: You'd start
: with a round steel wire with the temper let down so it's soft.  Then wind
: it into a spring and run it through rollers to give the wire a rectangular
: cross-section and simultaneously work harden it to give a nice hard spring
: wire.  Then you'd plate it. 
:   Does anyone know if this sounds correct?  

That sounds like it would work.  However, it seems that if you had two 
beveled rollers you could skip the first step of winding the wire into a 
coil.  The wire would go in from a spool and come out coiled.  

All the slinkies I've seen lately are plastic.  I wonder how they make 
those?  I'd guess they can extrude or roll it like above so that it coils up.

-- 
Richard.                         Jesus Saves!
                                       ...Gretzky steals -- he scores!

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From: [email-masked] (Timothy C. Eisele)
Date: 12 Apr 1995 09:03:54 -0400

Mark Kinsler ([email-masked]) wrote:
: My mathematics professor has taken to fooling with a steel "Slinky" spring
: toy at his desk.  We were looking at it today and the question came up:  
: How are these things made?  (Prof said, "well, you'd start with a steel 
: cylinder...").  The slinky consists of a flat-wound spring of fairly 
: tough steel plated with what looks like cadmium.   

On a related note:  The big problem with Slinkys is that they aren't big
enough to walk down modern staircases (the tread widths on the steps have
increased from what they were around, oh, fifty years ago, so the Slinkys
only "walk down stairs alone or in pairs" if you have an older house).
In particular, I'd rather like to have one that could walk down an "up"
escalator (with proper tuning of the length, it should be able to walk "down"
the steps indefinitely).  Anyone have any ideas about how to custom-make
one?  Another thought is to build one about the length and diameter of a
55-gallon drum, and walk it down some of the steeper streets around here
(Houghton is a rather hilly area, with a lot of streets that go up to 
a quarter of a mile with slopes of around 20 degrees or so...)

Tim Eisele
[email-masked]

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From: [email-masked] (Paul Amaranth)
Date: 14 Apr 1995 15:57:30 GMT

In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (Craig Smith) writes:
>>>>>> "Mark" == Mark Kinsler <[email-masked]> writes:
>In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (Mark Kinsler ) writes:
>
>
>    Mark> My mathematics professor has taken to fooling with a steel
>    Mark> "Slinky" spring toy at his desk.  We were looking at it
>    Mark> today and the question came up: How are these things made?
>    Mark> (Prof said, "well, you'd start with a steel cylinder...").
>    Mark> The slinky consists of a flat-wound spring of fairly tough
>    Mark> steel plated with what looks like cadmium.  I was
>                                            ^^^^^^^
>What?!?!?  I don't believe a toy designed for children could be plated
>with a heavy metal and legally sold.  Heavy metal poisoning and all.
>

In a recent American Science and Surplus catalog (from the folks who
used to be Jerryco - a really interesting catalog), they had both the
plastic and stainless steel slinkies.  The steel one was around $3.50
or so.

-- 
Paul Amaranth  Manager User Services - office: (810) 370 4541 (also voicemail)
               (e-mail)     [email-masked]    [Rochester, Michigan  USA]
   Mosaic page: http://www.acs.oakland.edu/links/amaranth/amaranth.html