Development of a high-speed air bearing spindle

This paper investigates an air spindle with both radial and thrust air bearings of newly developing one-directional porous materials. At present, orifice type and porous type are adopted for thrust air bearings. Orifice type thrust air bearing is fabricated by machining several micro-holes on a bearing pad bearing, permeability significantly affected by particle size and machining conditions is an important factor of performance, but it is hard to c porosities is suggested. It has many micro-porosities through axial direction, so stable and plenty of air can be supplied to the thrust bearing pad. A radial air bearing also can be substituted by a radial direction porous bearing as the same reason. In case of driving parts, built-in motor type is widely applied. But it needs additional cooling parts to drop heat from a motor. So application of an air turbine drive with light-weight shaft is suggested and additionally it will reduce fabricating cost.