Bellows couplings compensate for slight shaft misalignments while allowing for zero backlash and maintaining a high level of torsional stiffness as well as a low moment of inertia. This makes them ideal for high performance servo motor applications as well as any other requiring a high degree of accuracy in the transmission of velocity and torque. The ability of a single piece bellows coupling to compensate for misalignment is limited in most cases to approximately 0.008” of lateral offset.

While this shaft alignment tolerance is easy to achieve in common face-mounting configurations, it leaves little room for error in situations where the driving and driven elements are independently mounted to the base of the machine. In these cases care must be taken in the mounting of the two components so that the shafts are within the required alignment tolerance. Once the two shafts have been aligned, there must be a way to install the coupling without moving either component.

BKH servo couplings from R+W offer the high performance characteristics of metal bellows couplings with the ability to mount laterally and avoid disturbing aligned machine components. They are available in 16 different sizes with torque capacities ranging from 0.5 – 1500 Nm (4.43 – 13,275 in-lbs) and can accommodate English or metric shaft diameters from 3 – 80 mm (0.118 – 3.150 in.).