Home » Blog » New Way Celebrates Our 30th Anniversary!
Blog
 

New Way Celebrates Our 30th Anniversary!

New Way Celebrates Our 30th Anniversary!

In 2024, New Way Air Bearings ® was proud to celebrate its 30th anniversary, and we wanted to take the opportunity to look back at where we’ve come from, the accomplishments we’ve achieved, partnerships we’ve built, and where New Way intends to go from here.

On December 19th, 2024, New Way welcomed employees, customers, valued suppliers, friends and family to our

headquarters in Aston, Pennsylvania for a holiday party, and a celebration of 30 years of business, innovation and success. Three decades of operations means we didn’t just have current employees, but retired New Way legends who

New Way Christmas Tree

New Way Christmas Tree

helped build this business into the industry leader in porous media that we’re proud to be. With food and drinks for everyone, our own porous media air bearings served as unique decorations, while a servo-driven rotary stage kept the Christmas tree in constant motion. Demonstrations of our technology were readily available throughout the building, allowing our professional partners and family to experience the innovative components our employees work with every day.

New Way Air Bearings was founded in 1984 as Aeolus Air Bearings, a reference to the king of Aeolia in Homer’s Odyssey, and ruler of all the world’s winds. Aeolus Air Bearings would offer a standard line of simple air bearing pucks, beginning with what are now our evergreen products; the flat round and flat rectangular bearings. In 1987, Aeolus bearings were incorporated onto L.S. Starrett Coordinate Measuring Machines (CMMs), due to their contactless nature and hysteresis free motion. 1993 would see Aeolus rebrand into the New Way Air Bearings we know today, to better communicate our unique products and the advantages they offer; a new way forward for innumerable industries which require the pinnacle in precision motion.

From those humble but important beginnings, we’ve expanded into such industries as:

  • Flat Panel Displays – Using our Air Bars for the precise, rapid transport of glass and other substrates in the flat panel display market
  • Turbomachinery – Using our radial bearings, turbomachinery seals and balance bearing to offer high speed motion with an inherent resistance to whirl frequencies.
  • Automated Testing and Inspection – Enabling high cyclic, reliable motion for around the clock robotic testing apparatuses.
  • Automobile Testing – Supporting rolling wind tunnels and true force dynamometers
  • Computed Tomography – Enabling rapid, quiet CT scans for improved put through and patient comfort
  • Semiconductor Manufacturing – Supporting all processes of semiconductor manufacturing with ISO Class 1 cleanroom compliant porous media products.

Along with these industries, we’ve been privileged to work with a number of extraordinarily talented distributors and systems integrators, both across the United States and globally. To name just a few of our recent success stories:

  • ALIO Industries pushed the limits of 6D positioning with their Nano Precision system, thanks to hysteresis free air bearings
  • Shane Woody and IST built an arc second precise goniometer, fully bespoke and built around our flat round bearings, concave radial bearings, and a servo driven rotary stage.
  • Eric Blank and his firm PulseRay designed a world first system for diffraction microscopy imaging for the Air Force Research Laboratory, made possible thanks to the expertise of Rich Hesse, our technical sales engineer.
  • IBS Precision Engineering, used our flat round air bearings to achieve 50nm precision across a 3d measurement space, as well as collaborated with us on our first fully carbon, high heat bearings for SparkNano.
  • We expanded our global reach through values distributors such as Fukuda Corporation, Servo Engineering Sdn Bhd, and Gateway Motion Co., Ltd.

These are just a few of the incredible products, applications and partnerships we’ve built over our 30 years of operation. We remain proudly designed and built in America, and led by our founder, Drew Devitt. We look forward to another 30 years, and to even more revolutionary application of porous media!

Learn More About the Porous Media Difference