For the past 30 years or more, designers of highly dynamic servo drive systems have been turning to bellows couplings to optimize the stiffness, inertia, and smoothness of rotation in their coupling applications.
When it comes to torsionally rigid couplings the stainless steel bellows win in all three categories. Take for example high-speed camming of large inertia rollers in the paper and film products industries. As machine cycle rates continue to increase, the higher stiffness of the bellows becomes a necessity in cases where flexible disc couplings have been known to fail from extreme dynamics. A bellows coupling with aluminum hubs also offers the lowest inertia, doing its part to reduce strain on the motor and allowing it to be more responsive. In other instances, the symmetry of the round Bellows couplings are designed to provide high torsional stiffness, low inertia, and true constant velocity output rotation due to their continuous symmetry.
The bellows help to improve the smoothness of output rotation, minimizing mechanical noise in highly sensitive test systems, and making for sharper images in servo-driven printing presses. When shaft alignment is controlled, and production planning in place, bellows couplings are a proven winner in modern high-speed and high-precision equipment. Then why use servo disc couplings…?