The company manufactured air-operated machine vises, rotary feed tables, an arbor press, and air motors for machine tools. They also manufactured a line of automatic drilling and tapping attachments for drill presses that used various combinations of electric, air and hydraulic power and control; these attachments were intended for use in building custom solutions for automated manufacturing.

Information Sources

• 1944 issue of Automotive Industries (volume 90 page 80).

  Automatic tapping with precision Class III threads is said to be possible on any type of drill press, with the Electroaire power feed unit originated by The Bellows Company, Akron, Ohio.

  The new power feed utilizes a solenoid controlled Bellows air motor to advance and retract the spindle. Feed and retraction speeds are independently controlled and are subject to infinite variation. Down feed is held under ex-act, sensitive pressure at all times pre-venting thread forcing. The same pre-cise control of reverse speed is said to permit the tap to almost "float" out of the piece. Operation of the feed is controlled by a foot switch. The feed may be synchronized to solenoid controlled jigs, work feeds and fixtures to make the entire operation automatic. The power feed may be set for multicycle operation with indexing fixtures and dial feeds. The Bellows Electroaire makes possible high speed automatic drilling with wire size drills. Drill breakage is reduced by automatically slowing the rate of feed at drill break-through.

• Tooling & Production, Vol. 12, No. 11, Feb. 1947, Pg. 3.
• New Equipment Digest, Vol. 13, No. 7, July 1948, Pg. 2.
• 1948-06-29 Official Gazette of the United States Patent Office, page 1051: "Ser. No. 481,880. The Bellows Company, Akron Ohio." Filed Aug. 8, 1947. ''ELECTROAIRE'' for power feed for a drill press. Claims use since Jan. 4, 1944." This is registration number 502,773 and can be viewed on the USPTO website.
• 1951 issue of Modern Machine Shop (volume 24 page 314).

  A new and unique drilling device (illustrated) will be shown for the first time in Booths Nos. 1424-1428 by Bellows Co., Akron, Ohio. The new unit, named the "Hydrair," is electrically controlled but air powered with the feed rate hydraulically controlled. Drilling capacity is 1/4 inch with maximum depth of stroke of 4". Standard spindle rated free speed is 2,800 r.p.m. Five additional optical speed ranges are available to make the unit adaptable to widely varying materials. Optional speed ranges available are 17,000, 5,000, 1,450, 850, and 500 r.p.m. Spindle travel is powered by a Bellows Air Motor with built-in electrically-controlled Electroaire Valve. Control of the feeding rate is taken over at any desired point in the spindle travel by a Bellows Hydro-Check, affording a fully adjustable feed rate control. Feed rate is adjustable from 0 to 200 inches per minute at 90 lb. of air.

  Other new "packaged" Bellows "controlled-air-power" devices to be shown include a new torque-sensitive drill press feed which provides automatic drill cleaning for deep hole drilling; a new "close accuracy" dial feed with a 22-inch diameter table top; and a new air-powered shuttle fixture for fast work loading.