Air Bushings

 

Air Bushings

New Way® Air Bushings are ideal for rotary or linear shaft-based applications and can be found where precision motion is required. Our air bushings provide a frictionless alternative to ball bearings through the use of our proprietary Porous Media Technology™.

While contact ball bearings are a standard solution for rotary shaft applications, their drawbacks are numerous. The inertia inherent to contact bearings can lead to unwanted motion, and their friction requires lubrication, which only forestalls inevitable wear and tear.

For a better solution, the air bushing forms its porous media into a tube containing millions of sub-micron holes. The natural permeability of the porous carbon provides an even distribution of thin, but stiff air, and allows for a self-centering force, providing 360-degree, noncontact motion on round shafts.

Retrofitting an air bushing based system to one originally built for ball bearings is a simple task achieved through our in-house pillow blocks, which accommodate co-polymer O rings, allowing for correction of parallelism errors up to 0.002’ over the length of the shaft.

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Download the Energy Savings infographic

If your usage case requires one end to be constrained axially, we also offer thrust bushings as an extension of air bushing technology. If you have a rotary application with a heavier mass than an air bushing would support, our radial air bearings are highly modular and well suited to large shaft applications, vs our bushings, which are geared more towards linear applications, or smaller rotary ones

Installation of Air Bushings

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Download our air bushing installation guide (shown on right) for a step-by-step guide on how to hard mount an air bushing to one of our standard mounting blocks, as well as how to set up an air bushing for precision shaft usage, through the usage of bonded epoxy.

Cleanroom Compliant

Air Bearings for Cleanroom Applications Cover
New Way Air Bearings are ideally suited for cleanroom environments, or production and inspection environments where the airborne particulate count must be kept to an absolute minimum. Because air bearings naturally act as a sub-micron filter, the very nature of an air bearings’ operation filters the air which flows through, preventing the vast majority of particle infiltration. Additionally, noncontact air bearings eliminate the need for lubrication and the particulate generating tendencies of contact motion solutions, removing one more avenue for particles to enter an environment.

Internal New Way testing (which you can download and read, on the right) has shown porous media air bearings meet the requirements of ISO Class 3 cleanliness, producing less than 1,000 x 0.1μm particles / m3, and arguably meet the incredibly stringent class 1 requirements for producing only single-digit numbers of particles during the test period.

  • 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!

Converting
  • Conveying products with zero-contact rotation saves energy, and with no downtime for lubrication.
  • The air bushing’s air film allows for higher speeds, increasing production yields without the concerns of heat warping.
Automotive
  • The noncontact nature of air bearings makes them ideal for true force measurement of dynamic forces like torque, fatigue, and frame integrity through precision repeatable motion.
  • Have greater confidence in your results, knowing that asynchronous and synchronous errors associated with ball bearings are eliminated.
Energy
  • Reducing contact for rotating shaft applications means energy costs decrease while higher speeds are achieved.
  • Turbine operations can become more efficient, lowering operating costs and reducing maintenance.
Semiconductor
  • High speed, short-stroke precision is enabled through Frictionless Motion®®, allowing for sub-micron positioning in cleanroom environments.

Air Bushings Product Line

New Way Air Bushings are available in standard English and metric sizing. Need a custom size? Contact our engineering team to get started with your turnkey solution!


Air Bushings Metric
bushings
Air Bushings Metric

Air Bushings English
3 Inch English Air Bushing New Way Air Bearings Aston PA Philadelphia
Air Bushings English



CUSTOMER PROVEN SOLUTIONS

Magtrol’s Use of Air Bearings in Test Suite Improves Product Quality

Magtrol’s Use of Air Bearings in Test Suite Improves Product Quality

Magtrol Inc., a leader in torque measurement for small motors, recognized the unique capability of air bearings to provide frictionless torque measurements. They upgraded their calibration suits through radial air bearings and air bushings, providing a frictionless solution backed by engineering support they could trust.

Reaching the Stars with New Way Air Bearings

Reaching the Stars with New Way Air Bearings

During the construction of the Very Large Telescope (VLT), the European Southern Observatory (ESO) partnered with New Way to build the “OzPoz” multi-fiber positioner. Air bushings and flat round air bearings formed the basis for this precision instrument, which required 10 microns in order to build a robotic system capable of aligning the telescope.

Air Bushings Designed Into a Large Pendulum Wave

Air Bushings Designed Into a Large Pendulum Wave

New Way doesn’t just support the sciences, but also the arts as well, and we were proud to see our air bushings and flat round air bearings help bring the GLOW event in Eindhoven, Netherlands, to life. The Large Pendulum Wave used our air bearings to demonstrate the physicality of swinging frequency through the beauty of light in motion.

Tell Us About Your Application

Learn More About the Porous Media Difference