Metal bellows have been used for many years in various fields of application. Metal bellows are valuable to the following areas of industry: altitude sensors, fuel control systems and other aircraft systems; spacecraft engine and electronic system applications; vacuum and semiconductor systems; medical applications such as angioplasty pumps; petrochemical valve applications; industrial sealing and industrial control systems; high voltage switchgear applications; valve seal systems; water hammer arrestor systems; diesel engines; and laboratory equipment systems. As a hermetically sealed, totally metallic flexible sealing instrumentality, metal bellows are very valuable in any system that requires strict environmental control, and especially in systems requiring high and ultra-high vacuum operational environments. One common incarnation of metal bellows, called “edge-welded” bellows, has been used successfully in all of these fields.
However, edge-welded bellows have historically been custom-manufactured to a particular application. Custom engineering an edge-welded bellows is a very time-consuming and expensive process, and the industries and applications in which such bellows are used often place time demands upon the maker of the bellows that interfere with the development cycles of the applications even in the best case scenario. In fact, custom-engineering a bellows has become a bottleneck item in many of these applications. Another problem posed by custom-engineering bellows has been that when such bellows are eventually made, the bellows is typically installed by welding the bellows in place in the application. Welding the bellows into the application becomes a problem when the bellows need to be replaced. Some bellows manufacturers have tried to manufacture off-the-shelf bellows that could be purchased and installed by their customers, but such bellows often require couplings that consume excessive space in their applications. This is a problem since in most such cases, bellows operate in a limited space at best.
What is needed, then, is a modular bellows system that allows for bellows to be manufactured in various standard sizes to be purchased and installed in an application quickly and with a high-quality, low-space-consuming seal, while at the same time providing a modular bellows that can be replaced quickly and easily by the end user of the bellows without undue expense of time and resources.