Bearings system design whitepaper

The majority of electro-mechanical axis utilise extruded aluminium profile in a range of sizes with a single guide rail and bearing arrangement driven by an electric motor through a belt or ball screw arrangement. There are physical limitations to the forces such a system can accurately and reliably guide. Festo has published a new whitepaper "Key considerations for designers looking at bearing systems with linear axes”.

The white paper can be downloaded for free from www.festo.co.uk/bearings-whitepaper and aims to help designers understand some alternative design arrangements to cope with higher load applications and identifies design considerations observed during the development of a Festo high load, twin rail system.

"Since 2008, Festo have manufactured highly successful electro-mechanical axes,” says Nigel Dawson, product manager at Festo. "We identified the opportunity to offer machine builders a single combined axis solution with a wider profile with multiple guide rails to cater for high load applications. Whilst this seemed a simple task, the reality of developing such a solution proved more challenging than first considered and highlighted some useful insights for design engineers, which are shared within this whitepaper.”