Air Bushings
New Way® Air Bushings are ideal for rotary or linear shaft-based applications and are most often found where precision motion is required concurrently. Offered as an alternative to ball bearings, New Way Air Bushings remove friction through the use of our foundational Porous Media TechnologyTM.
Air bushings distribute air through a ‘tube’ of porous media containing millions of sub-micron holes. The natural permeability of the porous carbon provides an even distribution of a thin, but a stiff layer of air. The design elicits a self-centering force allowing a full 360°non-contact motion on round shafts.
Retrofits with ball bearings are easily achieved by coupling the air bushing with a pillow block housing unit. Co-polymer O-rings are provided for ease of installation into the pillow block to compensate for parallelism errors of up to .002″ over the length of the shaft.
Installation of Air Bushings
Download the Air Bushings Installation Guide
Download our air bushing installation guide for the step-by-step process on how to hard mount a New Way Air Bushing in one of our standard mounting blocks, as well as how to set up an air bushing to work with precision shafting.
Available in standard metric and imperial sizes, air bushings are designed to fit commonly-available shaft sizes. Need a custom size? Contact us to tell us more about your application!
Clean Room Compliant
Click to view full testing and analysis report
The unique use of porous media in air bushings makes them ideal for clean room use. Not only is less air used in air bushings when compared to orifice-based air bearings, but the air is evenly distributed by the porous media. Both of these features minimize the potential of currents or eddies in the clean room and its damaging impacts on production.
Another benefit of the use of porous media is its ability to perform as a sub-micron filter for the air emitted. Testing indicates the bearing satisfies the requirements of Class 1 (ISO class 3) cleanliness, with airborne particulate concentrate limits of less than 1,000 x 0.1μm particles / m3.
Looking to constrain one end axially? New Way also offers a thrust bushing as a natural extension of the air bushing.
Air Bushings Product Line
Available in standard metric and imperial sizes, air bushings are designed to fit commonly-available shaft sizes. Custom sizes are also available.
- No contact
- Decreased heat generation
- No wear
- No lubrication
- Crash resistant
- High-speed
- Energy efficient
- Nano-precision positioning
- Increased reliability
- Increased operations time
- Less maintenance downtime
Applications
With friction removed, New Way Air Bushings offer a number of operational efficiencies available across industries. Several example industries and the benefits they are seeing are listed here. Feel free to contact us today directly for use in your application!
- Conveyance of products uses significantly less energy, with no downtime driven by lubrication or wear
- Higher speeds are achievable, increasing production yields, as concerns of heat issues dissipate
- The non-contact nature of New Way Air Bushings is an ideal application to test dynamic forces such as torque, fatigue, and frame integrity
- Achieve greater confidence in test results as the asynchronous and synchronous errors associated with ball bearings are overcome
- The repeatable frictionless linear motion ensures precision for situations where lives depend on the accuracy of the test results
- When contact is removed, energy costs decrease while simultaneously achieving higher speeds
- Improved efficiency of turbine operation through lower operational costs and reduced maintenance
- Achieve high-speed, short-stroke precision with repeatable sub-micron positioning, all while meeting clean-room compliance
- No contact or wear translates to reduced maintenance costs and downtime when compared to ball bearings which must often be replaced
Questions
Contact us for a complimentary consultation for using air bushings in an existing or new application!
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