Using a combination of air pressure and vacuum, New Way VPL air bearings hold themselves down while simultaneously lifting themselves from a guide surface. By adjusting the vacuum and the pressure separately, the fly height and stiffness of these vacuum preloaded air bearings can be optimized.

This arrangement is ideal for applications where preloading is difficult or impossible. Obviously, there is a cost advantage because only one flat guide surface is necessary. (Opposed bearing preloading requires two flat guide surfaces that are parallel.

There is also a significant technical advantage. Both "x" and "y" axes can be supported by a single bearing plane. Further, the adjustability of film thickness can be used for focusing, squaring and sub-microinch vertical positioning over a range of several thousandths of an inch.

These bearings are perfect for ultra-precision applications because of their adjustable fly heights, fast settling time and naturally stable design. Using VPLs eliminates the need for stacked linear axes, and the pitch and roll errors inherent therein. They also reduce stack height, as well as Abbe errors.

The combination of air pressure and vacuum necessitates a different mounting methodology from New Way flat air bearings. The typical socket would not provide for bi-directional stiffness because the ball would pull out. New Way has engineered a flexure mount to provide equal stiffness in both directions, while providing a low pivot point. Because there is no stick-slip type friction in the flexture mount, even the smallest amount of angular adjustment is possible.

New Way Concave Porous Media™ Radial Air Bearings are designed to maximize open-ID aperture rotary motion. These made-to-order components enable you to engineer a supporting structure outside the rotating body using a radius cut along the length (L) or width (W) of the bearing, depending on your structural requirements.

W PROFILE
A concave radial air bearing profile with the radius cut across the width, to meet the needs of your application and the bearing-to-shaft ratio of your specific configuration.

L PROFILE
A concave radial air bearing profile with the radius cut across the length, to meet the needs of your application and the bearing-to-shaft ratio of your specific configuration.

New Way Convex Porous Media™ Radial Air Bearings are designed to minimize the OD circumference. These made-to-order components enabling you to engineer a support structure inside the rotating body using an external radius cut along the length (L) or width (W) of the bearing, depending on your requirements.

W PROFILE
A convex radial air bearing profile with the radius cut across the width, to meet the needs of your application and the bearing-to-shaft ratio of your specific configuration.

L PROFILE
A convex radial air bearing profile with the radius cut across the length, to meet the needs of your application and the bearing-to-shaft ratio of your specific configuration.

The New Way C-Series conveyor air bearing combines the best performance characteristics of the company's H-Series (high speed) and L-Series (low airflow) conveyors into a single hybrid design. This new profile is also engineered to significantly reduce both the system and the operating cost.

The single vacuum groove provides necessary control of the leading edge of the glass, while also enabling a greater fly height range of 20 to 120 microns. These fly heights have a stability of ±5 microns, well within the focal range of most inspection cameras, for example. This makes the C-Series ideal for FPD manufacturers looking for non-contact control of Flat Panel Display glass at 30 microns, and also for Solar Module manufacturers requiring 80 microns of fly height.

The combination of air pressure evenly distributed through the entire surface of the conveyor, and vacuum pulling the glass down, and flattening it, provides a high margin of safety against glass touch-down.

Further, the C-Series design enables conveyors to be placed further apart in the array, and can even enable the glass to 'jump' 100mm spaces (over inspection or production zones), further reducing costs and offering fabs or machine builders additional design flexibility.

Finally, because these conveyors are manufactured using New Way Porous Media Technology, which restricts the flow of air through the bearing surface, the compressed air required is significantly less than that for competitive products; even the compressor size can be reduced for many applications.

New Way® developed the high speed conveyor air bearing to provide FPD manufacturers with improved non-contact control of their substrates at high manufacturing process speeds, with lower initial set-up costs and reduced operating expenditures. A large vacuum area results in a smaller air gap, providing higher stiffness and improved damping. The large, attractive forces give excellent flattening ability for more reliable glass control. This, combined with the constant low pressure at the leading edge of the glass, prevents it from lifting off the conveyor and ‘sailing’ at high speeds.

As designers have tried to reduce or eliminate damage caused by the substrate contacting the chuck, they have increased the fly height, but the problem remains. That’s because a large air gap acts like an undamped spring, allowing waves to propagate, and increasing the probability of contact with the conveyor, resulting in scratches or glass fracture. Although it might seem counterintuitive, New Way has found that a lower air gap actually reduces the chance for contact, since the stiffness of an air film is inversely proportional to the air gap. Air gaps should be less than 50 microns for the best control of FPD glass. With New Way Porous Media Technology, that smaller air gap significantly reduces the probability of contact with the bearing surface, and the resulting scratches or glass fracture.

The New Way low flow fpd conveyor air bearing provides FPD manufacturers with non-contact control of Flat Panel Display glass, optimized for applications with low airflow requirements.

The difficulty with high fly-heights of greater than 50 microns is that they typically result in low air film stiffness (less control) unless they also have correspondingly high pressures and flows. By plumbing most of the porous media face with low pressure air, and with high pressure air only around the vacuum holes, the flow requirements are greatly reduced. This is how New Way low flow fpd conveyor air bearings are designed. The periodic high pressure areas, preloaded by the vacuum, create high stiffness points which stabilize the glass dynamics even at high air gaps and low air consumption. And because the pressurized air bleeds out of the entire bearing face it provides a high margin of safety against glass touch-down.