A spin flipper of reliable and robust long‐term operation was developed and has been used successfully at the Indiana University Cooler Storage Ring. To reverse the polarization of the stored beam, the frequency of a rf solenoid is swept adiabatically across a depolarizing resonance frequency. Depolarizing sidebands to the resonance are eliminated by shorting out the ring’s bunching rf cavity prior to the frequency sweep. With the spin flipper it is no longer necessary to dump the stored beam and to refill the ring with protons of opposite spin state. Rather, beam accumulation continues without reversing the spin at injection, and instead the polarization of the stored beam is flipped periodically. Thus the luminosity is significantly increased when the flipper is used. ©1996 American Institute of Physics.