Identify the Winding Direction of Coil Springs

Identifying the winding direction of a helical coil spring is critical to the design and functioning of your application or project. In some cases, getting the wrong direction of winding will make your springs useless.

The direction of the winding can be either right-hand or left-hand.

The direction of the winding has no effect on the function of the compression spring. There are cases in which two coil springs are required to work together to improve force, yet keep the same elasticity and/or reduce solid height. To do this, you place a compression spring inside the inner diameter of a larger compression spring. This means a left-handed compression spring inside a right-handed compression spring.

Determining the Direction of Wind

left-hand-wound
left-hand-wound
right-hand-wound
right-hand-wound

To determine a coil spring’s wind direction you must use the front coil. You can use different methods.

Method 1: “make a coil method”

  • First, position the front coil so that the tip of the wire is at 12 o’clock.
  • Then, check the direction in which the wire turns to make the first coil.
  • If it goes clockwise, it’s a right-hand spring(clockwise direction), if it coils counter-clockwise, the spring is left-handed(counter-clockwise direction).

Method 2: “fist method”

This method is more simple. It’s the method we use most. You use two fists of your own. You grab a compression spring body with your fist, please watch the direction of the front coil tip and your fingers.

  • If the front coil goes in the same direction as your fingers of this hand, such as the right hand, then it’s right-hand winding.

Take the left-hand wound for explaining, you grab the spring body with your left hand. You can see the fingers’ direction is the same way as the front coil. It means left winding. Please try to grab the spring body with your right hand, tell us your answer if the direction of your right hand’s fingers is the same as the front coil.

This method is very quick, you can practice it one time. And you can learn it in seconds. You must get it now.

This is the same logic for different compression springs, extension springs, and torsion springs. You can take the same method to check the direction.