Metal bellows production

Question

Metal bellows production

peterzwart (Mechanical)

(OP)

25 Jul 19 15:12

Hi,

We are looking for a production method that would allow us to produce metal bellows with special contours. See attached images. The bellows we intend to make will have a diameter of about 2100 mm and a height of 2750 mm. Material thickness will be in the order of 1 mm. Material will be stainless steel.

If beneficial from a manufacturing point of view, the contour may also follow a spiral circular path. This might be beneficial from a continuity point of view.

We have been looking into hydroforming and roll forming, but don't know about the possibilities.

Does anyone have suggestions on how to manufacture such bellows or companies that might be useful to consult?

Thank you very much in advance.
Peter

https://files.engineering.com/getfile.aspx?folder=1c137c6b-014c-4c6b-97a7-e

monkeydog (Aerospace) · Answer 1 · 2019-07-25 18:04:39

What you are looking for is something called nested bellows.
Do a web search on "nested bellows" for your pick of suppliers.

peterzwart (Mechanical) · Answer 2 · 2019-07-26 07:30:40

Hi Monkeydog,

Thank you for your reply. I am aware of the fact that these are called nested bellows. However, so far we didn't find a company that could produce these bellows at these dimensions. Also, therefore we are in need to develop such a manufacturing procedure ourselves.

Anyone knows how to produce this?

btrueblood (Mechanical) · Answer 3 · 2019-07-26 14:31:30

2m diameter is pretty big. Talked to any corrugated pipe manufacturers?

berkshire (Aeronautics) · Answer 4 · 2019-07-27 12:20:38

Have you talked to American Boa in Cumming, Georgia USA? http://americanboa.com/american-boa.htm They have plants world wide, I do not think they make anything this big , but they may be able to give you pointers.
B.E.

You are judged not by what you know, but by what you can do.

MikeHalloran (Mechanical) · Answer 5 · 2019-07-28 02:54:22

A former employer tooled up to make blow molded plastic bellows with helical corrugations, so they could be screwed into end terminations for fast assembly.

The terminations worked okay, but the bellows themselves exhibited extreme axial stiffness, making them unusable for our application.

They behaved sort of like a helical spring with every coil welded to the adjancent coil.
Note that helical spring coils normally 'slide' relative to adjacent coils.
Polyethylene film has pretty good shear strength.

Mike Halloran
Stratford, CT, USA

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Metal bellows production