Bellows

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Metallurgy

• Box bellows were and are traditionally used in Asia. (1)
• Pot bellows were used in ancient Egypt. (2)
• Tatara
  Tatara (furnace)
  
  The is the traditional Japanese furnace used for smelting iron and steel.The word originally meant just foot bellows, but its use was later extended to the whole furnace....
   foot bellows from Japan.
• Accordion bellows
  Accordion
  
  The accordion is a portable box-shaped musical instrument of the hand-held bellows-driven free reed aerophone family, sometimes referred to as a squeezebox....
  , with the characteristic pleated sides, have been used in Europe for many centuries. (3)
• Piston bellows were developed in the middle of the 18th century in Europe (4). However, the double action piston bellows were utilised by the Han rulers in ancient China as early as the 3rd century BCE (5).
• Metal bellows
  Metal bellows
  
  Bellows technology of the twentieth and twenty-first century is centered on metal bellows. These high-technology products bear little resemblance to the original leather bellows used traditionally in fireplaces and forges....
   were made to absorb axial movement in a dynamic condition.Often referred to as Axial Dynamics bellow types (6)

Further applications

• Bellows are widely used in industrial and mechanical applications such as rod boots, machinery way covers, lift covers and rail covers.
• Bellows tubing, a type of lightweight, flexible, extensible tubing may be used for delivery of gas or air at near-ambient pressure, as in early aqua-lung
  Aqua-lung
  
  Aqualung was the original name for the first open-circuit Scuba sets, developed by Emile Gagnan and Jacques-Yves Cousteau in 1943. It consists of a high pressure diving cylinder and a diving regulator that supplies the diver with breathing gas at ambient pressure, via a demand valve....
   designs.
• Cuckoo clock
  Cuckoo clock
  
  A cuckoo clock is a clock, typically pendulum clock, that striking clock using small bellows and pipes that imitate the call of the Common Cuckoo in addition to striking a wire gong....
  s use bellows to blow air through their gedackt
  Gedackt
  
  Gedackt is the name of a family of stops in pipe organ building. They are one of the most common types of organ flue pipe. The name is a German word, meaning "capped" or "covered"....
   (pipes) and imitate the call of the Common Cuckoo bird.
• Folding camera
  Camera
  
  A camera is a device that records images, either as a still photograph or as moving images known as videos or movies. The term comes from the camera obscura , an early mechanism of projecting images where an entire room functioned as a real-time imaging system; the modern camera evolved from the camera obscura....
  s, such as early Polaroid
  Instant camera
  
  The instant camera is a type of camera with instant film. The most famous are those made by the Polaroid Corporation. Polaroid no longer manufactures such cameras....
   models and some early Kodak Retina
  Kodak Retina
  
  Retina was the name of a long-running series of Germany-built Kodak cameras. Retinas were manufactured in Stuttgart by Nagel Camerawerk, which Kodak had acquired in 1931, and sold under the Kodak nameplate....
   and Retinette
  Kodak Retinette
  
  Kodak Retinette is the name of a classic series of cameras manufactured by the Eastman Kodak company. They were introduced in 1939 as a less expensive alternative to the Kodak Retina series....
   cameras, used bellows to exclude light while allowing the lens to be moved relative to the film plane for focusing.
• Musical instrument
  Musical instrument
  
  A musical instrument is an object constructed or used for the purpose of making music. In principle, anything that produces sound can serve as a musical instrument....
  s may employ bellows as a substitute or regulator for air pressure provided by the human lung
  Lung
  
  The lung is the essential respiration organ in air-breathing animals, including most tetrapods, a few fish and a few snails. In mammals and the more complex life forms, the two lungs are located in the chest on either side of the heart....
  s:
• Accordion
  Accordion
  
  The accordion is a portable box-shaped musical instrument of the hand-held bellows-driven free reed aerophone family, sometimes referred to as a squeezebox....
  , concertina
  Concertina
  
  A concertina is a Free-reed instrument musical instrument, like the various accordions and the harmonica. It has a bellows and buttons typically on both ends of it....
   and related instruments
• Reed organ
  Reed organ
  
  A reed organ, also called parlor organ, pump organ, cabinet organ, cottage organ, is an organ that generates its sounds using free metal reed ....
  
• Pipe organ
  Pipe organ
  
  The pipe organ is a keyboard musical instrument that produces sound by venting mechanically compressed air through resonant Organ pipe. Each pipe produces sound at one fixed pitch, so they are provided in sets or "ranks" with one pipe or more per note, each rank having a common timbre and loudness throughout....
  
• Some varieties of bagpipes
  Bagpipes
  
  Bagpipes are a class of musical instrument, aerophones using enclosed reed fed from a constant reservoir of air in the form of a bag. Though the Scottish Great Highland Bagpipe and Irish uilleann pipes have the greatest international visibility, bagpipes have historically been found throughout Europe, and into Northern Africa, the Persian...
  
• Harmonium
  Harmonium
  
  A harmonium is a free-standing keyboard instrument similar to a reed organ or pipe organ. Sound is produced by air, supplied by foot-operated or hand-operated bellows, being blown through sets of Free reed aerophone, resulting in a sound similar to that of an accordion....
  
• Portative
  Portative organ
  
  A portative organ is a small pipe organ that consists of one rank of flue pipes and played while strapped to the performer at a right angle....
  
• Piping expansion joint
  Expansion joint
  
  An expansion joint is an assembly designed to safely absorb the Thermal expansion and contraction of various construction materials, to absorb vibration, or to allow movement due to ground settlement or earthquakes....
  : In this application, bellows are formed in series to absorb thermal movement and vibration in piping systems that transport high temperature media such as exhaust gases or steam. (8)

See also

• sylphon
  Sylphon
  
  A sylphon is an old name for a cylindrical symmetry bellows. When made of metal, the sylphon shape was formerly created by metal spinning inside of a metal mold, and now by hydrostatic forming within a mold....
   for uses of metal bellows in experimental physics and engineering.

External links

• for bellows used in primitive blacksmithing.
• for a general discussion of bellows in metal work.