Spring technology with no upper limit

It has carried the concepts of dynamism and service sky-high since its inception, making it not only a pioneer in fast delivery, but also a leading developer and technological knowledge center of technical springs. Metaalvak spoke with Maarten Visscher, director of marketing at Tevema.

Offering fast deliveries since 1993, the company can rightly call itself a pioneer in dynamic logistics. This is provided by Tevema's central trading company, which prides itself on delivering technical springs within 24 hours for the entire Benelux and Germany. A logistical feat that starts at the Production departments.

Production

Tevema's two production sites, the parent company in Almere and its Polish division in Kudowa-Zdroj, have mainly the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany as their markets. Visscher: "90% of the Polish production here goes to the automotive; in the click system of the seat belt, for example, you already find five Tevema springs."

Study Office

Each of them technical specialty springs, developed at the company's own engineering office in Almere. It is Tevema's technological nerve center, from which the complete R&D and engineering of new springs based on customer specifications takes place. "Our human capital is really gold here," Visscher explains. "The engineering department is populated by eighty spring specialists with rich seniority, who design over 4 million new springs every year." It makes the company a pronounced title holder in the development of custom technical springs. 

Academic partners

Here the company can boast an excellent symbiosis with several technical universities, such as those of Delft and Antwerp. Visscher: "This has indeed proved to be a very healthy interaction for years, because we can share our knowledge in the field of dyeing technology completely openly and thus support each other technologically. This ensures that everyone is always up to speed with the latest technology, and such cooperation also guarantees mutual growth."

Quick response

An important exponent of this is the short response time to requests for new technical springs that Tevema's engineering office can present. "In most cases, the customer provides us with a technical drawing and ditto specifications," Visscher explains." Our people then carve out the concept phase using specialized software, after which they can proceed to prototyping fairly quickly. The prototype is then ready on average within 36 (!!) hours of receiving the specifications."

Standard range

Often Tevema can refer customers' new requests directly to the extensive standard spring range from the catalog. "The range is very wide with our wide compression springs, tension springs, conical compression springs, multi-wave springs and outrigger springs, among others," Visscher said. "In addition, with our range of specialty springs, the customer has an additional range of gas springs, suspension springs for automotive, standard parts, shafts, pins and ejectors." 

Materials and aftertreatment

In addition to the classic spring steel and stainless steel 304, Tevema also offers versions in a wide variety of materials such as, for example, titanium, tungsten, molybdenum or chrome vanadium. However, the spring characteristics and performance are also largely determined by the final finish. Visscher: "This can include chrome plating, nickel plating, chemical blackening, tinning or galvanizing. But pickling and passivation, gilding or silver plating are also among the possibilities."

The clean trend

Another post-treatment is cleanroom packaging. "We therefore see our own cleanroom production as a very important asset," Visscher said. "After all, there is currently a pronounced demand for cleanroom fabricated technical springs for the mechanical engineering industry, the semiconductor industry and some other industries where GSA (cleanliness standardization) is the order of the day, such as also aerospace ."