COMPANY HISTORY

In 1942 Roy Bell, Sr. founded Bell-Memphis, Incorporated (originally R. E. Bell Manufacturing). Bell-Memphis grew from a small wartime contract manufacturing shop to become a long-term supplier of aircraft control cable fittings based on the “clip-locking turnbuckle” patent that Bell-Memphis helped develop and later owned. The clip-locking turnbuckle became the aircraft industry standard and is still used today on most all aircraft from small private planes to the largest jet airliners.

Bell-Memphis continues to be a key supplier to the aircraft control cable fittings industry. Bell-Memphis is on a government QPL (Qualified Products List) to produce MS (Military Standard) control cable parts whose drawings are controlled by the US Military. The standard products consist of swaged wire rope fittings such as ball ends, eyes, and forks. The turnbuckle parts, which are used for adjusting control cable tension, consist of barrels, forks, eyes, swaged terminals, and the locking clip. Bell-Memphis’ aircraft fittings manufacturing operation consist of machining metal bar stock on screw machines, followed by various secondary operations.

In recent years, Bell-Memphis created the Medical Division to provide contract manufacturing support to the Memphis area orthopedic manufacturers. The Medical Division has augmented Bell-Memphis’ extensive expertise in CNC Swiss screw machines with the additional capabilities of CNC milling, CNC turning, Wire EDM, abrasive & chemical metal finishing, TIG welding, laser marking, and epoxy painting. At the Medical Division, our goal and greatest challenge is to design quality into the manufacturing process to deliver a perfect product in the timeframe promised.

Bell-Memphis is an ISO 9001:2000 certified business and operates at a single manufacturing plant located at 1650 Channel Avenue in Memphis, Tennessee. The company is housed in a 50,000 square foot plant with around 40 employees.