Abstract
Water driven stage was developed for the ultra-precision machine tools that is used for single-point diamond turning processes. A table of the stage is supported by water hydrostatic bearings. A feature of the stage is that the size of the stage is small. Accordingly, the stage can be advantageous for machining small precise parts in size. Even the size of machine tool is small, however, the bearing stiffness must be over acceptable level. Thus, the stiffness of the water hydrostatic bearings of the stage is studied through theory and experiments. The paper introduces equations to predict the load capacity and stiffness of the hydrostatic bearings. The experimental results show that the stiffness of the bearing is approximately 161 N/μm if the supply water pressure is 0.4 MPa.
