Rodgers' Piano Restorations
The Best Piano Rebuilding in the Business
9091 Ox Bow Rd.   North East, PA 16428
814-725-2665 weekday afternoons from 1 pm to 9 pm EST

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Second, we learn about the construction of the bellows.

The bellows is the part of a player piano that creates the suction that drives the rest of the mechanism.

Picture #4

Picture #4 shows the purpose of the "flap valves."   The bellows usually consist of two large pumping pneumatics that are opened and closed as you pump the piano.  In the case of reproducing pianos and orchestrions the pumping pneumatics are operated by an electric motor and a crank shaft.  In these types of pianos, there are usually four pumping pneumatics.  The purpose of the bellows is to evacuate air from the system.  To do this the air must be able to flow through the pumping pneumatics in one direction only.  You can see from the picture above how this is accomplished with the use of flap valves.

Picture #5

Picture #5 shows a pumping pneumatic along with another pneumatic called the "Reservoir."  The purpose of the reservoir is to maintain a steady level of vacuum to the system.  During the pumping of the bellows small variations in vacuum pressure are created as the pumping pneumatics change directions.  You can see that as the pumping pneumatic (right) opens, it sucks air out of the system including out of the reservoir.  This causes the reservoir to collapse.

Picture #6

As you can see in Picture #6, the reservoir is spring loaded.   As the pumping pneumatic (right) is closing and not able to be evacuating air from the system, the Reservoir opens by the action of its spring.  This temporarily maintains the flow of air from the system until the bellows can resume pumping.   Of course, there is more than one pumping pneumatic so the reservoir is only called upon to take up air during gaps in the pumping operation.  The reservoir also helps to even out the suction level when a large amount of air is called for during play.  (Like when a large number of notes are suddenly activated all at once.)

Next the wind motor: