Enter what the mechanism has to do. The selector sizes every actuator form in the handbook against it and ranks what fits, at each of the four fatigue-life design levels.

Units
How is the part heated?
Motion
Duty
Output required
lbf
in
in

Ask for both and only the forms that work in both directions survive: an open pitch spring, or a Belleville carried either way.

Space available
in
in
in

Outside diameter is the hole the actuator has to drop into. Bore is the clearance something has to pass through it — a shaft, a bolt, a line. Leave it at zero when nothing does.

Temperatures
MinMax

Ambient is where the part must stay put. Degrees F.

Electrical
V
W
s

Power and heating time are the same equation from two ends. Leave one blank and the selector fills it in.

Cooling
s
Start from an application

What fits

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How these numbers are worked out
Force comes from the design stress for the level you need — 100 MPa at a million cycles, 138 at a hundred thousand, 172 at ten thousand, 250 at a hundred — applied to the working cross-section. Motion comes from the matching strain, 1%, 2.5%, 5% and 7%, converted by the form: straight in tension, torsion of the wire in a helical spring, bending of the section in a torsion spring or a Belleville, shear of the wall in a torque tube. Heating time assumes all the electrical energy lands in the metal, which is optimistic; cooling is a lumped free-convection estimate and is the figure most worth testing. Every value is deliberately conservative, the same as the handbook. Ask us when your case sits near a limit.

Sized from the Handbook of Nitinol Actuators. Custom geometry, custom transition temperatures and forms outside this list: nitinol@KelloggsResearchLabs.com · 1-855-583-5353