Air Bearings: How do they work? See high precision XY-table example video. www.pi-usa.us/...
Air bearings provide very smooth and accurate motion They can be used in linear and rotary motion systems. XY-air bearing stages with the highest motion fidelity are based on a planar air bearing design driven by linear motors.
Air Bearing Stage articles: www.pi-usa.us/...
Air bearing stages provide extremely straight and flat XY motion. Air bearing stages are used wafer inspection and scribing applications, as well as other ultra-precision motion applications such as flat panel inspection.
The cross-beam mounts to the Y axis via a highly engineered flexural coupling that provides yaw-compliance without sacrificing system stiffness. The gantry axis is a dual air-bearing design that incorporates dual linear motors and dual linear encoders. Ironless linear motors provide smooth motion and no cogging or attractive forces. Both incremental and absolute encoder options are available. The PIglide HS incorporates three high-accuracy linear encoders, one for the bridge axis and two for the gantry axis. For Gantry robots see: www.pi-usa.us/...
XY-Stage overview: www.pi-usa.us/...