New Way® Linear Slides provide a noncontact alternative to conventional, contact bearing-based slides. Packaged as an integrated system, New Way Linear Slides are composed of a porous carbon media air bearing, an aluminum stage and housing, and a precision-ground, aluminum guide rail.
The linear air slide product lines are built using our patented air bearing design and our foundational Porous Media Technology™. This technology works by producing a stiff, nanometers-thick layer of air as the frictionless medium of motion between the linear air bearing face and the guide surface. The unique carbon substrate ensures an even flow of air, offering improvements in both precision and operational efficiencies, as well as a robust, crash-resistant design.
A key differentiator of New Way Air Slides is our unique mechanism for integrating the Porous Media™ slide against its guide rail. We use vacuum replication to position the stage securely against the rail, eliminating vibration and harmonic noise. This process results in superior stability as well as straightness and stiffness, allowing you to achieve unprecedented precision motion without hysteresis error.
Technical Report 3 covers the application of our vacuum-replaced bearings for high-speed, high-precision machine tools, and proves how valuable this technique is. The air bearing possesses a uniquely positive correlation between stiffness and damping (known as the squeeze-film effect). This, combined with vacuum replication against the guide, quantifiably produces greater straightness and reduced resonance.
Linear air bearings achieve all of these benefits while also reducing the time and cost of maintenance nearly to zero. Because linear slide bearings are a noncontact technology, there is no wear and tear on rolling elements. Thus, there is no need for lubrication to prevent—or more appropriately, forestall—the spalling which inevitably affects rolling element- and ball bearing-based systems.
New Way offers four types of linear slides to accommodate a wide range of motion, customer needs and requirements. All are built on our foundational Porous Media Technology™, and each type provides off-the-shelf options with varying slide sizes and linear slide rail lengths. Custom solutions are also available.
The simplest and most straightforward solution, end-supported air slides are designed for situations where continuous support of the slide structure is impossible or impractical. End-supported slides are often used in a gantry or X/Y-axis configurations, but can also be used along the Z-axis by fixing the stage and moving the guide bar.
The dovetail series of air slides features a lean, low-profile track. This provides consistent performance for high acceleration, even with moderate loads. The guide bar can be mounted in continuous support configurations to accommodate larger loads. These linear slides can also be stacked, and include mounts for encoders and noncontact linear motors.
The Boxway series combines our widest stage with a T-shaped linear slide rail, allowing for the largest load capacity of our linear slides. Boxway slides are continuously supported, and also include mounts for noncontact motors and encoders.
The New Way Airway Linear Motion Guide System is designed as an alternative to existing rolling-element guide systems bolted to a flat surface. Once the current system has been unscrewed and removed, the Airway System is designed to seamlessly replace it, bolting into the previous system’s place. It is used in the same manner, but now with all the benefits of Frictionless Motion®️.
The unique properties of Porous Media-based linear air bearings make them ideal for use in cleanroom environments where particle generation and infiltration must be kept to an absolute minimum. Because the Porous Media itself acts as a sub-micron filter, the very nature of the linear air bearing filters air into the cleanroom environment. Furthermore, noncontact bearing technology means no lubrication can become aerosolized, or no bearing spalling can eject particles into the local environment.
Our internal testing, which you can view and download on the right-hand side of the page, demonstrates how New Way’s full line of linear slide bearings meets ISO class 3—and arguably ISO Class 1—standards for cleanroom airborne particulate limits.
New Way offers four types of linear slides to accommodate a wide range of customer requirements. All are built on our foundational Porous Media Technology™ , and each type provides standard off-the-shelf options with various slide sizes and rail lengths. Custom slides are also available.
Discover the benefits, applications, and specifications of non-contact linear air slides
Airpot® Corporation, an industry leader in force pneumatics, motion, and displacement, turned to New Way® when they wanted to test their latest product. While Airpot has a long history of providing linear actuation and motion damping across their product line, they too, like New Way, recognize the value of Frictionless Motion®️, which guided the development of their Airpel-AB Air Cylinders.
New Way partnered with Axis New England, a firm specializing in robotic and machine automation for the lithography, semiconductor, and precision optics industry. We provided them with a solution built on flat round air bearings to meet the needs of a customer who produces ultra-high format printers, allowing for high speeds and precise positioning.
If you have any questions about the application, installation, or use of linear slides, please feel free to contact us so we can discuss what New Way Air Bearings can do for you! We also invite you to download our free eBook on 5 Industries Using Air Bearings to Deliver Disruptive Innovation today.
