The New Way® Air Bushing has been designed to make air bearing technology readily available to engineers who have pre-existing designs based on round shaft guides. These Bushings run on standard precision steel shafting and are directly interchangeable with most rolling element bushings.

New Way® air bushings are perfect bearings for voice coil linear motor driven stages but any motion application that requires very low friction, very smooth motion or oil-less operation are potential candidates for New Way® air bushings.

The Bushing mounts inside a bore on o-rings designed to be compliant enough to allow the bushing to self-align. In applications where higher stiffness is required, the bearing may be set in-place by a precision potting procedure. Standard mounting housings (pillow blocks) are available for easy assembly of custom slides.

The New Way Air Bushing is comprised of a porous carbon sleeve encased in an aluminum housing. Two o-rings are mounted on the outside of the housing and serve two roles when the bushing is mounted.

The first is to position and support the Bushing. The second is to create a sealed chamber by which pressurized air can be introduced through the outer housing to the porous carbon liner. The pressurized air can be introduced any where between the two o-rings. The air then passes thought the porous carbon and forms a pressurized film of air between the inside diameter of the Bushing and the guide.

The ability of the Bushing to carry a load is greatly dependent upon the size of the air film (or the diametrical difference between the guide O.D. and the bushing I.D.). Another important factor in the ability of the Bushings to carry a load is the alignment of the bushing and the guide. The compliance of the o-rings compensate for some misalignment of the guide to the hole in which the bearing is mounted. Other factors which effect the performance of the Bushing are input air pressure, surface finish of the guide, and geometry of the guide.