Senior Aerospace Metal Bellows

Senior Aerospace Metal Bellows’ Thermal Actuators are used on aircraft engine fuel-oil heat exchangers. Senior Aerospace solved a reliability problem with the rubber boot design by replacing it with metal bellows.Traditionally, in this design, the temperature probe contained a rubber boot that encapsulated wax. As the wax heated or cooled, it would change phase and thus expanded or contracted driving the pin in or out, which actuated a bypass valve.The rubber deteriorated, which allowed the wax to leak, adversely affecting performance and ultimately failing altogether. This unit had a very high failure rate. With this new technology, Senior’s Thermal Actuators last 10 years or greater with no performance issues.

Many of today’s aircraft are adopting electrohydrostatic actuators (EHAs) for flight surface controls. One critical component for these EHAs is the bellows reservoir. For performance, maintenance, and reliability requirements, bellows reservoirs are far superior to conventional piston reservoirs for these applications. Senior Aerospace has developed lightweight titanium EHA reservoirs for use on both commercial and military aircraft.

Surgical instruments require precision metal joining of very thin gauge metals. Materials include stainless steel, titanium and other alloys. The same precision metal joining processes used for metal bellows assemblies can be applied to non-bellows thin gauge metal joining.

When your metering pump demands microliter precision, hermetic sealing, fluid compatibility, and must operate for millions of cycles, you need the Senior Metal Bellows pump. Designed with self-retracting stainless steel, Inconel or titanium bellows, these devices are capable of millions of cycles and allow for use with fluids incompatible with elastomeric materials. Custom designed to suit specific requirements.

Medical lasers use a welded metal bellows in the beam focusing mechanism, which allows a range of motion to align the front end of the mirror to a laser focus beam. The welded metal bellows maintains a hermetic seal providing a high-cycle life.

Many aircraft water systems use a pressurized system architecture that requires a compressor. The compressor pressurizes the water tank so that water can be delivered to the galley and the lavatories. High reliability and long service life are paramount. Additionally, clean operation is critical. Senior Aerospace developed a lightweight compressor, which uses a 400 Hz AC motor, for use on aircraft. By using a bellows compressor, we can offer contamination- free operation. The bellows is designed for virtually infinite cycle life providing for a mean time between failures in excess of 50, 000 hours.

Surgical instruments require precision metal joining of very thin gauge metals. Materials include stainless steel, titanium and other alloys. The same precision metal joining processes used for metal bellows assemblies can be applied to non-bellows thin gauge metal joining.