Category Archive: Maverick Spring Makers News
ISO 14001 REGISTRATION
Maverick Spring Makers Limited, a manufacturer of custom springs in Brantford, Ontario, is proud to announce their Environmental Management System has been registered to ISO 14001.
ISO 14001 provides a framework for organizations to protect the environment, to identify and control their environmental impact and continually improve their performance in response to changing external and internal factors.
Since 1996 Maverick’s Quality Management System has been registered, first to ISO QS 9000 and currently to ISO/TS 16949. A quality management system is a collection of business processes focused on consistently meeting customer requirements and enhancing their satisfaction. Building on our ISO/TS 16949 registration, ISO 14001 registration is
further evidence of our efforts to continually improve our processes and further minimize any negative impact our business activities have on the environment.
Maverick Spring Makers Limited is committed to the practice of sound environmental stewardship and the promotion of health, safety and the well- being of our employees.
We will never knowingly permit any person, or the environment to be harmed by our actions or our products.
Maverick is committed to the philosophy of REDUCE, REUSE, RECYCLE.
Frequently Asked Questions
So you’ve nearly completed your project, but need one more thing to make it work: a spring. Fortunately, you know Maverick has you covered. When our clients come to us with their spring needs, there are a few things we’ll ask you to ensure the best solution for you in a timely and economical manner. For your convenience, we’ve included some of those questions below.
Do you have a drawing/sample we can copy?
This is always extremely helpful in getting the process started right away. We will evaluate the drawing and/or sample to make sure it’s what you need it to be, and confirm that it is able to be manufactured.
No sample? No problem! Do you need compression, extension, or torsion?
Most commonly, the answer here is compression. If that’s the case, we’ll need to know a few things.
What is the installed length of the spring?
What is the force required at the installed length?
What is the working length of the spring?
What is the force required at the working length of the spring?
If the spring works over a rod, what size rod?
If it works over a hole, what size hole?
What environment does the spring work in? (Hot, corrosive, cold, shock-loading, etc.)
How long does the spring need to last?
Now that we have more detailed information, we can help find the optimum spring design for your requirements. Sometimes at this stage, we unfortunately have to let you know that the task is not possible. This is usually due to the spring design work being left at the end of an overall project design, with little or no physical space available to fit a properly functioning spring. To avoid such a fate, it’s best to figure out the performance and fatigue requirements of the spring in your design in its earliest stages.
Of course, if there is anything we can do to aid in fitting a compression spring into a slightly smaller space, we will. End grinding can improve the end squareness and the load bearing surface, while reducing the solid height of the spring. Set-removing can improve fatigue life for what might have otherwise proved an overstressed design. We work with conical spring designs, hourglass spring designs, barrel shapes, multiple pitch, multiple diameters — for the most part, you name it and Maverick can do it!
If work such as this is needed for your design, it’s important to keep in mind that all a springs characteristics are inter-related. Changing one aspect of a design will undoubtedly mean something else will need to change to accommodate it. We at Maverick Spring Makers are happy to work with you to find the right compromise, and keep your project running smoothly.
Why We’re a ISO/TS 16949 Certified Custom Spring Manufacturer
At Maverick Spring, we have always taken great pride in our commitment to quality. When a customer begins a relationship with us, we understand they trust that our work will meet or exceed all of their expectations—and for this reason, we have taken the extra steps necessary to become ISO/TS 16949:2009 certified.
The International Organization for Standardization, or ISO, has been the leading voluntary international standard organization since 1947. They create specifications for products, services, and good practices for a wide range of industries across the globe. Perhaps their most well known and respected standard is ISO 9001:2008, which “sets out the criteria for a quality management system.”
ISO 9001:2008 has a few branches, and one of those is the ISO/TS 16949:2009 certification that we are proud to have earned. This “defines the quality management system requirements for the design and development, production and, when relevant, installation and service of automotive-related products,” according to the website. While the definition is simple, the audit process to attention this is not.
Many hours are spent reviewing processes, procedures, and numbers—and once you are registered, the ISO will consistently audit your performance to uphold its values. This is our ISO/TS 16949:2009 is such a point of pride—it tells you that we never take a day off when it comes to quality.
We also want to mention that we were the first Canadian-owned spring company to achieve the original QS-9000 recognition in 1996, which is a standard originally funneled in between the ISO/TS 16949:2009 and ISO 9001 certifications. Beginning in 2006, the QS-9000 certification was looped into ISO:9001, proving that we’ve been working toward a commitment to quality for many years.
Does Maverick’s Quality Management System work? Ask our customers. In 2013, we had no customer complaints, no customer rejections. We’re not perfect, and we do make the occasional mistake—but our mistakes don’t get shipped to the customer. We are certified in the manufacture of compression, extension, and torsion springs and wire forms, and you can view the certificate of registration by clicking here.
Custom Spring Manufacturing for Cleaner Water
One of the challenges in designing products with springs is figuring out exactly what you need for a spring: You know what you want the spring to do—but what will the spring look like? How big will it be? What material will it be made of?
One option involves getting in contact with one of several suppliers for so-called catalog springs. Often, they can get you close to what you need—on a lucky day you’ll find exactly what you need, and when you only need a handful of a product, buying from a catalog is often a good way to go. (Truth be told, we’ve bought catalog springs ourselves.) But when you need a specific spring and you need the spring in mass production quantities, you need a custom spring manufacturer like Maverick Spring Makers Limited.
Take, for example, our new friends at Twothirds Water, where they’ve been working on a better water filter. Bradley Pierik, the founder of Two Thirds Water comes from a background where the goal isn’t that everyone uses a certain technology to filter water, but that everyone has clean water. We like that. We think that is a healthy, forward thinking way to develop a business. Twothirds Water has a water filter design that we think is world class, and will change—for the better—lives all over the world.
In the organization’s TAPP water filter, there is a simple spring loaded ball check valve to control the water flow. In the development stages, Twothirds Water used a zinc-plated music wire spring with ground ends that they sourced from an industrial supply catalog. The spring gave the physical performance required, but for a spring that will experience tens of thousands of liters of flowing water over the course of years, corrosion resistance is very important—and zinc plating isn’t going to be good enough, which is why they called us.
Since this is fresh water, Stainless Steel Type 302 is the best, most common, most economical place to start. To keep costs down, we advised against grinding the spring ends, which will save pennies per unit and thousands in the bigger picture. One of the challenges in spring design is that you cannot directly substitute Stainless Steel Type 302 for music wire. All other things being equal, a spring made with Stainless Steel Type 302 will be approximately 13 percent weaker than a spring made with music wire. As well, the stainless steel spring cannot be deflected as much as music wire before the spring takes a permanent set. To change to Stainless Steel from music wire, you will often need to change or increase the wire size, too. The final complication is that the spring is in the water flow. That is, if the spring is compressed to solid, water won’t flow.
Working with Twothirds Water, Maverick Spring Makers Limited has helped develop a spring that keeps the ball valve closed when it is supposed to be closed, allowing water to flow through when the valve is open and maintains acceptable flow rates. To top it off, this spring is much cheaper than buying a stock spring from a catalog.
For more information on our custom spring capabilities or to see how we can save you money, head over to our website.
All images courtesy of Twothirds Water.
We Believe in the Family-Owned Business
When we introduced you to the company in a previous blog, we discussed how the founder, John Monné, and his family are still a major part of Maverick Spring Makers. The business began as one idea from Monné, and it has evolved to manufacture custom spring products for North America—and we’ve learned a lot along the way.
For starters, we’ve always kept at the forefront of our new ideas and expansion plans on how far the company has come. Most notably, we’ve discovered our flexibility an offering not many others can replicate, and we have the ability to accommodate the customer—and employee—need without affecting the ability to deliver.
While most businesses we tend to work with in the manufacturing industry are corporations and smaller companies, we’ve taken great pride in remaining a family-owned business—and we’re not the only ones. Out of the 500 companies on Standard and Poor’s index, approximately one-third of them are family-controlled, according to Business Insider. The publication breaks down the top 10 largest family-run businesses, including Mars, News Corp., Comcast, and Ford Motor Co.
Inc.com has a great round-up of success tips for family-owned companies, including the value of making mistakes, the true power of leadership, and setting parameters for business, which we completely agree with. Smaller and family-owned businesses have the opportunity to work with clients on a face-to-face level and build a relationship, and we believe these characteristics are invaluable to businesses.
Even though Maverick Spring Makers Limited is a small, family owned business, we’re also part of something much larger. We’re a little more than two hours away from the Windsor-Detroit border, where 25 percent of all Canada/U.S. trade crosses. The value of trade that crosses the Ambassador Bridge is equal to the value of trade between the United States and Japan. Trade between Canada and the United States supports more than 7 million U.S jobs.
In Canada, 98 percent of all employer businesses are classified as small business, with almost 50 percent of Canada’s total workforce employed in small business. Approximately 86 percent of small businesses in Canada are exporters and make up more than 40 percent of private sector GDP. More than half of small Canadian manufacturers have demonstrated commitments to research and development, and we’re no exception. We’ll share some of our in-house innovations in future blogs.
Want to know more about Maverick Spring Makers or do business with us? Give us a call at 800-563-7304.
Welcome to Maverick Spring Makers Limited
For those of us just joining us—and others looking for a refresher on our 40-year-company history—we wanted to take a moment to introduce ourselves. If our name isn’t a complete giveaway, we are spring makers, but we’re much more than that, too.
While the company was officially founded in 1968, we date it back to the late 1950s, when Holland-born John Monné was toying with an idea in his mind. He had just moved to Canada and was working at a few local spring companies. Surrounded with products and fellow spring-makers, the idea of a better way to make short runs of compression springs, with improved quality, began to evolve. John’s idea, first built in the basement of the family home, devoloped into the Bennett-Mahler Maxi Coil spring winding lathe. Almost 40 years after reaching the market, Bennett Mahler is still in the coiling lathe business.
From there, Maverick Spring Makers officially formed, and business began to evolve out of short order and into mass production in the early 1970s. (Fun fact: Our first mass-production customer is still a customer to this day.) Since then, we’ve moved facilities, become the first Canadian-owned spring company to achieve QS-9000 registration, thrived in the “Great Recession,” and seen major expansions. About every 20 months we purchase new CNC machines continue to meet the needs of our customers. Our core manufacturing strengths include mass production of custom compression, extension and torsion spring manufacturing, as well as consulting and prototyping.
John Monné is still an integral part of this company and continues to work for the company. Without his knack for developing new ideas and entrepreneurial drive, companies across North America wouldn’t have a one-stop shop for custom-manufactured springs.
At Maverick Spring, we take the “Monné approach” seriously—and we believe innovations and creativity can begin anywhere, anytime. Because of this, we decided to create this blog as a platform to discuss industry news, trends, and our latest company updates. Feel free to subscribe to these posts, and don’t forget to join the conversation on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+.