Edit: solved. I am just going to have to purchase in smaller, more expensive quantities in the short term and make a larger order once I have some more consistent sales coming in. I was thinking that I could get into the $0.25/ea range with an order of around 250, but clearly that is not the case. Some of the quotes I received were simply absurd, from McMaster-Carr they sent me a quote sheet for $868.64 for 250 springs. Lol. Lmao even. Such is the struggle of making small production runs of parts for a small independent shop! If anyone is curious, this was for a project for a low-profile desk mounting solution for flight sim gear that I plan on selling on my Etsy shop that wouldn’t require any heavy aluminum extrusions or clamps or other bulky/expensive parts.
I recently designed my part around some springs that came in an assortment pack thinking they would be very standardized and cheap. Now every spring website I look at it wants on the high end $10-15 per spring for simple stainless steel closed design, on the lower end $2 each, and best i could find was a shipped from China ebay listing for about $0.60 each shipped direct from china through ebay, which for all I know I will need to pay duties on bringing it up to $2 each anyway.
This seems insane to me considering the assortment pack was $10 and included 10 of my desired springs, it would be cheaper to order 20 assortment packs and throw out the rest of the springs. That can’t possibly be the most economical way to do that, especially considering I’m wanting to order in a reasonable bulk.
edit: I don’t have any specific neuton requirements and my other parameters are very flexible, im just looking for a bare basic stainless spring.
Comments
I’ve used century spring or smalley spring for large orders of specific springs before.
I’m afraid the reason is because in a commercial context, 200 pieces is not ‘Reasonable bulk’.
If a spring is like a cup of flour, you’re buying two 25-lb bags of flour from the retail store. In the meanwhile, there’s a bakery that goes through a 50-lb bag every half hour and they’ve negotiated a contracted price from a supplier.
This is why prototyping and small volume manufacturing is very expensive. If you can’t find a catalog listed part and rely on surplus or assortment lots or similar, you end up in the situation you’re in.
If the ultimate per-spring cost is what matters, shop around for 1,000 pieces. You’ll probably pay the same as if you tried to just buy 250, but you’ll have an extra 800 pieces when you’re done.
Check McMaster Carr
I’ve learned when designing with springs to have three springs sourced for the project before detailed design is complete, start with the middle option and buy the other choices ahead of time. This allows rapid prototyping without risk of further redesign for a different spring. Same principal used for magnets.
I learned this the hard way.
Is this the same thing?
https://a.co/d/44CjdFU
After McMaster, my go-tos are Lee Spring and WB Jones.
Have you considered making your own springs?
Mcmaster carr?
Check out Lee Spring.
Lee spring, transparent pricing on volume pricing and they stock a ton take credit card.
They’re perfect for what you want.
If you just need to get through one production run, one possibility is to try to get the part through eBay or TaoBao; or cherry picking what you need from Amazon as you’ve described.
You just can’t rely on it.
I once worked with a manufacturing “client” who was sourcing key components from TaoBao and then was Pikachu-faced when the supplier (i.e., the account on TaoBao) that they kept buying thermocouples from suddenly had no more for sale and was never restocking it…
I’ve had good luck with Dependable Spring Company near Portland, Oregon. They’re a small company and actually care to be helpful. They’ve also got an ebay store with some of their supply listed. You can also contact them directly and see what they might be able to do.
have you tried Alibaba, they do bulk sales.
Century Spring. For lower volumes they always worked much better for me than Lee Spring.
How about aliexpress?
This has happened to me before. It sucks
Springsfast.com (formerly Jones Springs)
I’ve used them a several times for small batch springs at work. This is assuming they will sell to an individual, but as long as you have a pair of calipers and can measure your spring, you can get a quote on any amount. You’re going to pay for it in the first spring because of setup cost but then the quantities after that are going to be much cheaper.
I just looked up an example of a spring I had quoted. 1 is $173. 10 is $21.24 each. 100 is $2.67 each
Fastenal might be able to help
Seems like I may be late to the party here and downvote me if someone has already said this, but you can buy a tub of small springs on Amazon for $17-$20. If that doesn’t work you could look up RC car suspension. Weird, I know, but it helped me when I was making a prototype a few months ago 🤙🏼
Look into winding your own
Looks like they’re $.49 each on aliexpress qty 10. Email the seller and ask for a bulk order.
Asraymond.com
Then find a spring supplier to make you custom springs.
Does Century Spring have what you need? You are well under real volume pricing until you add another couple zeros, but you might find a mild discount.
Beware equipment enertia. It’s tends to make a lot of products look like the last product and it tends to make economics of scale even larger.
It’s even apparent what a given manufactures minimum economic order quantity is. Take their piece prices and multiply it by the minimum order quantity to get that price. Many times the total for the first three order quantities are essentially the same. Many times 500, 1,000 and 2,500 are within 10-20% of each other. Sometimes the pricing can get such that it’s actually cheaper by a few dollars to order 2,500 that it is to order a thousand.
Many processes, such as springs will take more than 100 parts to get the machine set up and quality control performed.