50 McDonald Blvd.
Aston, PA 19014 USA
610.494.6700
www.newwayairbearings.com
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
New Way® Air Bearings Extends Line of Flat Rectangular Air Bearings
To Accommodate New Profiles and Applications
Aston, Pennsylvania, USA, June 26, 2008 -- New Way® Air Bearings has expanded its line of flat,
rectangular porous media air bearings. Previously, this core product line – New Way’s original
product, in fact – consisted of four sizes. With the addition of seven new sizes – three larger bearings
(up to 150mm x 300mm) and four smaller bearings (down to 12mm x 24mm) – there are now a total of
11 New Way rectangular air bearings altogether.
This broader range of rectangular air bearings will enable engineers to address a number of changing
needs. The first is the increasing size of Flat Panel Display glass. FPD manufacturers now use
gantries that must span several meters. These moving gantries are often made of granite, and can be
much heavier. With this line extension, New Way now offers rectangular air bearings with the load
capacity to handle these new large gantries – the fastest-growing segment of the stage market.
Second, recognizing the benefits of air bearings, engineers had been trying to use multiple bearings
(per side) to support a single heavier gantry. This made adjustments more difficult, because when
load is shifted to one of the bearings, load is reduced on a neighboring bearing. To be kinematically
correct, three points define a plane – or at most four bearings (two on each side) define two lines on a
plane. Attempts to define a plane with eight bearings are fraught with issues, as it is difficult to adjust
all of those bearings to carry equal load. New Way recognized the need to offer larger bearings so
that engineers could follow good design principles when using our air bearings in their equipment.
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“New Way does offer large flat round air bearings,” noted New Way Chairman and CTO Drew Devitt.
“Our largest standard product is 200mm in diameter, and we continue to receive requests for even
larger ones. And because many machine builders use large granite surface plates as a reference
base, they often have real estate available to run these wide (round) bearings.”
“But round bearings take up a lot of machine-width real estate,” Devitt continued, “And extra width can
mean extra cost for the builder. Our three new large rectangular bearings enable us to offer more load
capacity in a smaller-width area. It’s a more efficient solution for the space.”
New Way also responded to the development of the micro – and more recently the nano – industries,
by engineering four smaller rectangular air bearings ideal for smaller profiles.
“Our new smaller rectangular air bearings provide a significant advantage over traditional rollerbearings for micromachining or nano-positioning applications,” said Devitt. “With contact bearings the
friction becomes too high a percentage of the total force. But with New Way Porous Media
TechnologyTM, there is no contact, so there is no friction.”
New Way engineered these four new smaller rectangular air bearings to be used anywhere engineers
are trying to build small, lightweight machines with high-precision requirements; for example,
biomedical and pharmaceutical applications.
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.
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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.
Porous media technology has been in use for more than 20 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.
Further, because carbon is itself inherently a bearing surface, the New Way air bearings still fly even
after severe surface damage. Having no friction or wear problems, and with no lubrication
requirements, air bearings are ideal for applications in abrasive, dry and 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.
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New Way Rectangular Air Bearing Product Line Extension
Part Number
Size
Status
S121201
12mm x 24mm
New Small
S121501
15mm x 30mm
New Small
S122001
20mm x 40mm
New Small
S122501
25mm x 50mm
New Small
S124001
40mm x 50mm
Original
S124002
40mm x 80mm
Original
S125001
50mm x 100mm
Original
S127501
75mm x 150mm
Original
S1210001
100mm x 200mm
New Large
S1212501
125mm x 250mm
New Large
S1215001
150mm x 300mm
New Large
Stiffness
A common misconception about air
bearings is that they do not have the
required stiffness for precision applications.
However, a 6” diameter bearing running at
60psi actually has a stiffness greater than
2,000,000 lb/in with a load of 1,000 lbs. Put
another way, that’s less than one-half of a
millionth of an inch deflection per pound of
additional force. By testing a bearing
through a range of loads and measuring the
change in air gap, a stiffness plot can be
created like the one shown in the Figure to
the right. Notice that the slope is not linear
and as the film gets thinner the stiffness
gets higher.
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The Benefits of Air Bearings
Zero friction
Because of zero static friction, infinite resolution and very high repeatability are possible.
Zero wear
Non-contact means virtually zero wear resulting in consistent machine performance and low particle
generation.
Straighter motion
Rolling element bearings are directly influenced by surface finish and irregularities on the guide. Being
non-contact air bearings average these errors.
Silent and smooth operation
Re-circulating rollers or balls create noise and vibration as hard elements become loaded and
unloaded and change direction in return tubes. This is especially noticeable in the resolution of
scanners.
Higher damping
Being fluid film bearings, air bearings have a squeeze film damping effect resulting in higher dynamic
stiffness and better controllability.
Eliminates oil
Air bearings do not use oil lubrication, eliminating the problems associated with oil. In dusty
environments (dry machining) ways are dry and bearings are self-cleaning because positive air
pressure pushes dust away. In contrast, oil lubrication becomes a lapping slurry.
High speeds
High speeds - high acceleration. No balls or rollers to slip at high acceleration.
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Engineering With the Right Aspect Ratio
Although New Way also manufactures flat round air bearings, the company engineered this complete
line of rectangular air bearings to optimize the bearing area for a given guide-width. When
dimensioning this product line, New Way engineers determined that it would be ideal to create a twoto-one aspect ratio. This configuration maximizes the amount of load capacity possible for a particular
guide-surface width without the need for the bearings to become inordinately thick.
Increasing the ratio to three times the width would create significant bearing deflection issues because
the loading point in the back is in the center, and the load is evenly distributed across the face via the
air film. The load from the air film, especially around the edge of the bearing, makes for a significant
cantilever. So a bearing with a three-to-one dimensional ratio would need to be substantially thicker in
order to avoid deflections.
Our bearings operate nominally near five-to-ten microns of ‘air gap.’ Air bearings will bend
microscopically as customers apply load to the center point, even when there is an equal distribution
of pressure beneath. If the bearing bends more than 5 microns it may ground on the guide surface. As
bearings get to be three times their width, they either have to be very thick or they are going to bend and touch
down.
But air distribution is not homogeneous even in the best porous media air bearings (ours). Typically,
pressure distribution can be illustrated as a bell curve. As the aspect ratio of the bearing grows
beyond 2-to-1, the further from rectangular ‘symmetry,’ the more the bell curve for pressure
distribution erodes at the outer reaches. This is the case due to the deflection referenced above,
because resistance to flow is a cubed function of the gap, so the resulting bend reduces pressure
most significantly near the edges of the bearing.
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So the 2-to-1 aspect ratio is a sort of fundamental ratio in nature, and it also works out very well for
New Way because we are able to maximize the amount of carrying capacity for a given width of air
bearing without too high a price in the total thickness of the bearing.
2
1
If you examine our Flat Rectangular Air Bearings you will see that they are a little thicker than our Flat
Round Air Bearings. That is because the distance from the center of the bearing to the edge of the
bearing can be greater in the rectangular shape than in the round shape. This added thickness helps
to prevent deflection when these rectangular bearings are utilized within recommended operating
parameters.
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About New Way Air Bearings
New Way Air Bearings, Inc. is the market leader in the design and manufacture of modular air
bearings and the recognized provider of porous media air bearing solutions. Founded in 1994, the
company is located in Aston, Pennsylvania, USA, 15 minutes from Philadelphia International Airport.
In August, 2007, New Way® Air Bearings was named to Inc. Magazine's list of the 5,000 fastestgrowing, private companies in America for 2007. The company ranked as No. 2,294 on the list, which
measured companies by revenue growth from 2003 to 2006. In November of 2007, The Greater
Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce named New Way recipient of its Technological Excellence of the
Year Award for 2008.
Visit New Way Air Bearings at http://www.newwayairbearings.com. This web site includes
specifications for the company's full product range, design and installation guides, mounting
hardware, air specifications, technical support, and a full range of accessories.
Contact Information
Michael Wright
Director of Marketing
New Way Air Bearings
50 McDonald Blvd. Aston, PA 19014
E-mail mwright@newwayairbearings.com
Web http://www.newwayairbearings.com
Tel 610.364.3453
Fax 610.494.0911
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High-resolution photography is available for use by the press at
http://www.newwayairbearings.com/Photography-Products or by contacting Michael Wright directly
using the information above.
Air Bearing - Flat Rectangular - Line View A
Air Bearing - Flat Rectangular - Line View B
Air Bearing - Flat Rectangular - Line View C
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