Air bearings - very intriguing

[NeoTech]

In my boreddom i stumbled across.. "air bearings." a well 50+ year old technique. http://www.loadpoint-bearings.co.uk/about/how-air-bearings-work/

This what really got me interested, a air block with a porouse material acting as air distribution with adjusted tolerances.. If this technique could be shrunk down and air could be properly provided to the ways.. why couldnt this be adapted for say a cnc lathe.. or cnc mill? =)

Spindle heads using the technique do already exist evidently and have a simple motor BLDC motor for providing rpm and torque. (this is what im researching, making a spindle) extremly fine precisions seems to be available when running in air bearings.. Now come the dumb question.. this tech is 50+ years old.. that in my book mean someone must have handmade it initially.. but how

[awemawson]

I have an air bearing spindle on my Clarkson Mk2 tool & cutter grinder. If you spin it by hand it carries on for a very long time.

[NeoTech]

ah yest it seems that tool grinders have been utilizing these for a while..  Nothing really new under the sun.. bits its quite cool tech.. if you combine these with a outrunner BLDC motor you got a pretty sweet torque curve for a highspeed spindle as well.. no idea how it would take cutting forces though. ;D

[Noitoen]

Related to that, for heavy tailstocks, if you inject a little air pressure in the way's lubrication hole, it can be moved with your little finger. You will have a linear air bearing

[PekkaNF]

You probably have seen this (AIR BEARING APPLICATION AND DESIGN GUIDE - NEW WAY PRECISION Porous Media Air Bearing Solutions™ ):
http://www.olympic-controls.com/documents/Air%20Bearing%20Design%20Guide.pdf

Sometimes this taiwanese ripped PDF is available, it looks like some pages of books and diagrams have been copied into it, but it looks pretty good:

***EDIT: sorry that link does not seem to work anymore, can still find the documet with google, but can't acess it. I don't know other name for chinese characters, but the name I learned in japanese "kanji"  精密工具機氣, but cant't read them ***

Like OMG! That link is just few kanji characters on my firefox and here it covers half a page.....I'll try to fix it later. Anyway, I found it once, when I googled "the application of the narrow guide principle". I eventtually found and bought a book that had the interesting part...but in the end of that PDF it had a whole lot of stuff about air linear bearings.

Pekka

[NeoTech]

hehe the kanji urls didnt work at all in my browser... just crashed it. .;)

Well there is alot of interesting mechanical solutions to explore..