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See How We Improved our Manufacturing in 2020!

See How We Improved our Manufacturing in 2020!

Learn How Our Products Benefit From Our Continual Drive to Improve

New Way Air Bearings® has always led in the production of Porous Media™ air bearings. And in 2020, we dedicated ourselves to not just rolling out new products and expanding into new industries, but also to the pursuit of improving our manufacturing processes themselves. 2020 saw us launch several new products, each of which represented leaps and bounds in what we’re capable of producing and the industries we serve. New Way Air turns, New Seal™, and Spherical Air Bearings all speak to the high level of precision quality we’re bringing to our customers, and these are just the start.

Each product we launched in 2020 was a testament to the precision engineering and manufacturing for which we take pride.

Our Air Turns offer our revolutionary porous media material in a cylindrical form, allowing us to replace contact metal rollers in the roll-to-roll conveyance of flexible substrates. Since the porous carbon wraps all the way around the air turn, you can rotate a material 180 degrees around the air turn surface, all while maintaining the capability to tune web tension by varying the air pressure supplied to the bearing surface. Additionally, the noncontact nature of the technology completely removes the possibility of roller-induced-surface defects.

Spherical air bearings also represented a step forward for us, shaping our proprietary porous media into a hemisphere, enabling our clients to build truly frictionless flight simulators and zero-gravity simulation environments for satellite attitude testing.

The New-Seal was another highlight of 2020, allowing us to combine all the benefits of a bearing and seal in one, enabling rotary motion while resisting particle and fluid infiltration up to 30 psi. The entire New-Seal assembly is manufactured in-house, including both halves of the bearing, and the interior runner and spacer which allows for simultaneous rotational motion and sealing.

New Way foresees 2021 as another year of growth and progress, and one of the ways we intend to make this happen is by focusing on our turnkey engineering and machining capabilities. New Way is more than happy to design and manufacture custom products to suit your needs.

Backed up by a full team of design engineers and expert machinists, our in-house machining and inspection capabilities include:

  • 3-axis VMCs
  • Continuous and Positional 5-axis
  • Horizontal Mills with 4axis
  • CNC Gantry Router—10ft bed
  • Knee Mill
  • Surface Grinding
  • Flycutting
  • Honing Machines
  • CNC Lathes
  • C-axis and Live Tooling
  • Precision Surface Finishing of Porous Media
  • Large Diameter Turning of Porous Media (up to 68″)

Our machining capabilities allow us to go as large or as small as you need—with the ability to accommodate up to 68-inch diameter porous media surfaces. Our inspection and metrology capabilities include:

  • CMM with Wrist
  • Faro Arm
  • Optical Flat up to 12″
  • Optical Comparator
  • Hardness Tester

In the past, the clients we’ve produced custom products for spanned the gamut. We used our manufacturing expertise to help Sytech Systems, Inc. build precision medical equipment when their manufacturing robots couldn’t move as precisely as they needed. We took advantage of our ability to machine large-scale components when the Keck Observatory asked us to help build a new rotary encoder and track system for their world-renowned telescopes, and we integrated our air bearings into IBS Precision Engineering’s ISARA400, to develop one of the most accurate 3D metrology solutions in the world.

New Way Air Bearings remains dedicated to improving our manufacturing capabilities so that we can better serve our clients. 2020 was a landmark year for us, rolling out new products that tested our abilities and rewarded our resolve. Going forward into 2021, we’re eager to use our cutting-edge manufacturing techniques to better serve you and push the limits of what’s possible with porous media.

Contact us today for a complimentary consultation