Smalley Blog

February 16, 2021	Smalley Launches New Catalog - An Engineer’s Go-To Guide for Rings and Springs Smalley Launches New Catalog - An Engineer’s Go-To Guide for Rings and Springs Print or Interactive Digital Download Available Lake Zurich, IL, February 18, 2021 – Find your next wave spring, retaining ring, and constant section ring in Smalley’s newest Catalog and Design Guide release. As the inventor of the edgewound wave spring with over 100 years of manufacturing excellence, Smalley has... Read More>>
January 22, 2021	Smalley Wins GM Supplier Quality Excellence Award for 8th Consecutive Year Lake Zurich, IL, January 21, 2021 - Smalley was presented the General Motors Supplier Quality Excellence Award for the year 2019, marking the 8th consecutive year to receive this prestigious honor. General Motors works with thousands of suppliers worldwide, but only a small percentage are presented with this award. The Supplier Quality Excellence Award is exclusive to top-performing suppliers... Read More>>
December 31, 2020	#1 Reason for Retaining Ring Failure and How to Overcome It Drills, saws, sanders, and grinders - what do all of these power tools have in common? Retaining rings keep them from falling apart. A retaining ring’s function is to hold components or assemblies in place. For a retaining ring in a power tool, this is no easy feat as it is regularly exposed to high axial and vibrational force. The retaining ring must maintain its integrity, despite the various... Read More>>
December 14, 2020	Special Rings: Self-Locking, Balanced, and ID/OD Lock Smalley Spirolox Retaining Rings are the trusted industry solution because of their unique configuration, reliability, and convenience across thousands of applications. While we have five standard types of retaining rings broken down into 30 configurations, we also know that every application is unique. If one of our standard retaining rings does not fit your application requirements, we offer... Read More>>
December 1, 2020	How We Package our Wave Springs and Retaining Rings I’ve found the perfect retaining ring or wave spring, but how do I get it here? You’ve found the perfect ring or spring for your application. Now you’re wondering, “how do I get it here?”. The logistics of shipping and packaging can be a headache when you’re working with components of all sorts of shapes, sizes, and quantities. To help simplify the process, we’ve highlighted some of the key ways... Read More>>
September 10, 2020	Ask the Expert - NACE Compliance Welcome back to Ask the Expert! This time, Smalley’s Expert Engineers answer questions about NACE compliance. What is NACE? NACE, the National Association of Corrosion Engineers, is a not-for-profit technical organization known worldwide as the authority for solutions in corrosion control. NACE works with many industries, such as marine, oil & gas, industrial, and utilities to create... Read More>>
June 15, 2020	Smalley Spirolox® Retaining Ring vs. Stamped Circlip/Snap Ring While there are a variety of retaining rings available in the industry, engineers specify Spirolox retaining rings, because of their unique configuration, reliability, and convenience. This blog compares a traditional snap ring to a Smalley Spirolox retaining ring, as there are notable differences between them. What makes a Smalley Spirolox® retaining ring different, and what is the advantage... Read More>>
April 14, 2020	Helping the Fight versus COVID-19/Coronavirus As a leading supplier to the medical industry, Smalley provides products and engineering expertise to support our customers worldwide, including the needs of the essential businesses that we supply. Our manufacturing plant located in Lake Zurich, Illinois remains fully functional and Smalley has taken numerous actions in response to the coronavirus to protect the health and safety of our team... Read More>>
November 20, 2019	Smalley Wins GM Supplier Quality Excellence Award for 7th Consecutive Year 4,000+ GM suppliers worldwide 432 Recipients of the Supplier Quality Excellence Award 13 Specific quality requirements showing above standard performance 0 Defects in parts and components 1 Smalley Lake Zurich, IL, November 13, 2019 - Smalley was presented the General Motors Supplier Quality Excellence Award for the year 2018. This marks the 7th consecutive year that Smalley has received... Read More>>
October 21, 2019	Ask the Expert - Retaining Ring Interchange and Stock Material Welcome back to the Ask the Expert Blog, where our engineers answer commonly asked retaining ring and wave spring design questions. This week, our experts field some questions about interchangeable retaining rings and Smalley's stock material. What are the differences between a Spirolox® retaining ring with an RR/RS part number and a Smalley WH/WS part number? Are they interchangeable? They are... Read More>>