Application of Planar Air Bearing Concept for Precision Machine Tool Design

INTRODUCTION The North American manufacturing industry has seen a growing demand for precision machined components in recent years. Biomedical devices, micro-optical moulds, and automotive parts are examples of precision manufactured components. Traditional milling practices have reached the limit of the machines’ accuracy and cannot achieve high tolerances now demanded in the micro-machining field. New ultra-precision machines have emerged, which incorporate high accuracy positioning and have been developed to meet these new demands [1], [2], [3], [4]. This paper presents a new design which applies the planar air bearing concept to achieve highspeed and high-accuracy positioning over a relatively large work area.