Product Release

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Posted Jun 30 2008
Filed under: Bearings Mechanical Components

This broader range of rectangular air bearings provides engineers in a number of high-precision, high technology markets with solutions to existing application issues. The first is the increasing size of Flat Panel Display glass. In this market there are now gantries that must span several meters. These moving gantries are also much heavier. With this line extension, New Way now offers rectangular air bearings with the load capacity to handle these new large gantries.

Second, we found that customers would often try to use multiple bearings (per side) to support a single gantry. This makes adjustments difficult, because when you take load on one of the bearings, load is reduced on a neighboring bearing. To be kinematically correct, three - or at most four - bearings define a plane. If you try to define a plane with eight bearings, it will be difficult to adjust all of those bearings to be on the same plane. New Way needed to offer larger bearings so that our customers could follow good design principles in the use of our bearings in their equipment.

New Way does offer large flat round air bearings. However, round bearings take up more real estate. With the three new large rectangular air bearings, we are able to offer more load capacity in a smaller area. We continue to receive orders from organizations building large gantry stages for the flat panel display industry, as well as other large stage designs.
On the opposite side of the spectrum, New Way engineered four smaller rectangular air bearings to address the development of the micro and, more recently, the nano world. If you are involved with micromachining or nano-positioning, for example, you may find these new smaller configurations ideal. Essentially, anywhere engineers or designers are trying to build small devices, and have need for a high degree of precision, these new smaller rectangular air bearings may have an application.

With a complete line of 11 flat rectangular air bearings, New Way now enables customers to handle applications from the micro to the macro with precision - in fact, with all of the advantages that air bearings typically provide.

The Advantages of Porous Media
New Way's modular air bearing products are inexpensive, robust, and easy to use. Unlike conventional orifice air bearings, New Way Porous Media® Technology controls the airflow across the entire bearing surface through millions of sub-micron-sized holes in the material. More consistent air pressure distribution provides for superior performance, and the bearings still fly even after severe surface damage.

Porous media technology has been in use for 15 years in precision applications such as coordinate measuring machines, precision machine tools, and test equipment. One advantage is that the bearing does not damage the surface it runs on should the air supply be inadvertently lost. Having no friction or wear problems, and with no lubrication requirements, air bearings are ideal for applications in demanding environments that wreak havoc on traditional contact bearings.

For more sophisticated applications like the FPD marketplace, New Way® Air Bearings are approved for use in Class-10 Clean Rooms, where the constant flow of air helps keep the dust and particles found even in that environment away from the bearing surface.

New Way Air Bearings 50 McDonald Blvd. Aston PA 19014 US Phone: 610.494.6700 Website: www.newwayairbearings.com