Air Characteristics in Air Turbine Spindle of Ultra Precision Machines

Air Spindles have been used in ultra precision machines for several years due to their advantages such as high speed rotation, low friction, and low vibration, [1]. Air spindles are widely used in these machines for producing precise work pieces. Although, spindles function on a very complicated theoretical basis, [2, 3], their structure is very simple and consists of mainly a rotor and a stator. The rotor/stator could be made of different shapes. A cylindrical shape is the one commonly in use. The spindle designed in this work has a spherical configuration. It has been designed so that it could be moved without application of electric motor and only by a wind turbine system, [4]. The spindle studied in this research uses compressed air for rotor suspension, and has an air turbine for rotating its shaft. A thin air film acts as bearing layer between rotor and stator. In design procedure, operation parameters such as air inlet pressure for turbine, air inlet pressure for bearing, diameter of turbine nuzzles, diameter of bearing nuzzles, clearance between rotor and stator and etc. have been considered, [5]. A prototype spindle has been manufactured using design criteria. The influence of above mentioned parameters have been recognized through experiments.