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The spring is, perhaps, one of the most practical machines ever developed by mankind. While modern society understands this simple machine as a piece of wound or coiled metal the basic definition of the spring describes them as an elastic object used to store mechanical energy. The earliest of these elastic objects were, as a matter of fact, not coiled (and not metal); instead they were very simple. The best example of this is a bow (as in “bow and arrow”). The elasticity of the bow stores energy when pulled back and transfer that energy into arrow when it is released. Obviously, modern springs are understood in the conventionally coiled, metallic form, which did not begin to appear until 15th century. While those early versions could have been made out of just about any corded fiber, the average modern spring is made out of spring steel. Custom springs can be made out of anything from non-ferrous metals that include phosphor bronze, beryllium copper, and titanium. Much like steel is a reinforced type of iron, these metallic compounds are formulated to aid in mechanical facility (electrical conductivity, corrosion resistance, etc). You can make a spring out of just about any material so long as it provides specific variables of rigidity and elasticity; the amount of force a spring supplies, however, is not dependent on the material but on its uncoiled length (something that was not understood until described by British physicist Robert Hooke in 1676). In this highly mechanized world, custom springs can often be very important. Many different kinds of devices and contraptions rely on the energy-storing potential of these very simple machines. The first coiled springs, for example, were used to power automatic clocks, a practice that is still around today as springs play a large part in watch construction. These days there are several different spring classifications, which makes custom springs an important component of many mechanized industries. Tension/Extension Springs is the classification under which the kinds of spring most people visualize fall. A Compression Spring is designed to work, basically, opposite that of the tension spring: the latter stores energy as it extends while the former stores energy as it compresses. A Torsion Spring stores energy that is loaded through a twisting (or “torqued”) action. A Constant Spring is any type of spring whose load remains constant and a Variable Spring is any type whose coil resistance to the load can vary. The most common types of custom springs include: the Cantilever Spring, the Helical Spring, the Balance Spring, the Leaf Spring, and the V-Spring. Other types that are less common include: the Belleville Washer, the Gas Spring, the Ideal Spring, the Mainspring, the Negator Spring, and the Progressive Rate Coil Spring. You might be most interested to know that the rubber band is actually classified, mechanically, as a type of tension spring that is basically
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