Garage Door Repair - Springs

Martin Door Springs – Quality, Long-Lasting Springs

Dave Martin: His Quest for the Perfect Garage Door Spring

The Martin Door spring has a lifespan nearly four times greater than most of its competitors. The Martin spring is the result of a tireless effort on the part of David O. Martin to find the right solution for his doors.

In the 1960’s Dave Martin began searching for a method of coating oil-tempered springs. Oil-tempered springs had been the staple of the industry for many years and were reliable, but were also dirty. Garage door installers were infamous for their black, dirty hands and the resulting fingerprints on newly installed doors. Dave wanted a better, cleaner option.

He contacted a major spring wire manufacturer with his ideas and soon introduced the first painted torsion springs. These springs were cleaned with solvents before applying good quality black paint.

This new painted spring was clean to handle but had one major drawback. Over a short period of time as the torsion spring wound and unwound, the rubbing of the coils ground the paint, which sprinkled down onto the face of the garage door.

In the late 70’s Dave began again searching for a better coating process. He came across an old engineering book printed by U.S. Steel Corporation, which explained in detail the problems and possible solutions to making a quality galvanized spring wire. The book noted three major problems in the process:

Dipping the wire in hot zinc anneals the wire, shifting the temperature of the wire to unpredictable levels.
Zinc leaves a lumpy surface (commonly seen in galvanized fencing wire).
The resulting wire could not handle the stress levels of other types of spring wire.

During this period, the U.S. government was also encouraging all Americans to begin using the metric system, so Dave chose to continue his experiments using metric spring wire.

His goal was to produce a spring wire that was clean to the touch while maintaining similar characteristics to the oil-tempered wire. He contacted a major domestic spring wire manufacturer and began working on the problem. The result was a colossal failure. The annealing, smoothness and stress problems were too much to overcome.

True to his gritty Scottish heritage he didn’t give up. He went overseas and this time found a spring wire manufacturer who took a different approach, experimenting with different wire grades, applying various zinc processes and modifying the engineering formulas.

After two years of trial and error, Dave was able to manufacture the first galvanized garage door tension spring. This product was introduced in 1985. Martin’s Zinc-Tempered Torsion Springs are trademarked.