About Us
In 1918, Smalley was founded as a supplier of precision automotive piston rings. Today, Smalley Steel Ring Company is the market leader in the industrial retaining ring, snap ring, wave spring and compression spring business, a position we work hard to maintain and build upon. Located in the Midwestern region of the United States, Smalley’s offices and manufacturing facility are in Lake Zurich, Illinois, a northwest suburb of Chicago.

Every Smalley retaining ring and wave spring is engineered and manufactured to the highest quality standards using skills and processes we have honed over three-quarters of a century. Our obsession with quality, combined with our near-perfect record of on-time delivery, has earned us an approved supplier status with leading OEM manufacturers around the world. Due to the ceaseless demands we place upon ourselves, Smalley has won the coveted title of Preferred Source in the most demanding retaining ring and wave spring applications: automotive, agriculture, aerospace, electronics, appliance, and industrial.

While we are understandably proud of the recognition we have received, ultimately, it is our products that set us apart. Unlike stamped rings and springs, which are stamped through the metal grain, our edgewound retaining rings and wave springs have a circumferential metal grain structure that gives them exceptional strength, dimensional stability, and predictable performance characteristics.

Finally, every Smalley snap ring and wave spring is backed by our continued support. We are constantly researching ways to expand and improve our Customer Service and Engineering/Technical Assistance. We welcome your comments and your design challenges. Smalley will work hard to become your Preferred Source of retaining rings and wave springs.

Raw Material
As we meet the increasing demand for more raw material sizes, the flat wire rolling mill operation in our plant continues to grow. Years ago, Smalley began a vertical integration that has evolved into the production of hundreds of material cross-sections in a wide variety of alloys. In most cases, we can deliver retaining rings, snap rings and wave springs to meet your immediate needs.

Manufacturing
Edgewinding, also known as The No-Tooling-Cost™ Process, is our precision forming operation that coils pre-tempered flat wire on edge to create a near-perfect circle. (Visualize a Slinky®, the coiled metal toy which has delighted generations of children.) Circular-grain metallurgy gives our products strength and stability far superior to that of conventional rings and springs which are simply stamped through the metal grain. Smalley edgewound products can be coiled to your specification in any diameter and with any number of turns (layers or coils), effectively eliminating material waste.

As flexible as it is precise, our edgewinding process accommodates your design changes without the need for additional tooling and die modifications. This facilitates your developmental work, allowing us to produce your low-quantity custom orders and your working prototypes quickly and economically. Even after your initial prototype is produced, or in mid-stream production, our edgewinding process allows us to alter your design or dimensions with simple machine adjustments or a change in raw material size. After the revised specifications are approved, we complete and document the final setup. Then, we quickly resume production of your order, whether it consists of one part or one million.

Prototypes
About the easiest way to test a theoretical retaining ring or wave spring design is to produce a working prototype-a task at which Smalley excels. A prime example is the development of a custom wave spring. We can adjust dimensions, change the number of waves and the number of turns, and try different combinations of wave spring variables. Finally, we test for function, before production, so we know we have it right.

Smalley-produced prototypes are also the most economical way to provide results on a trial-and-error basis. From one to a thousand pieces, we can produce, try, modify, and reproduce your wave spring or snap ring design as often as necessary-all without special tooling costs.

Finished Parts Warehouse

Smalley maintains a substantial parts inventory of every cataloged/standard retaining ring and wave spring-in both carbon and stainless steel. We do this to meet our JIT deliveries as well as any immediate requirement that you may have. In the rare circumstance that our inventory runs low, we can quickly replenish any item overnight.

In addition to our finished parts, we house a vast inventory of raw material sizes, stocked in thousands of pounds of flat wire. We are always ready to meet your demand for a quick turnaround in low to high quantities of existing or new designs.