YAABA - yet another air bearing arm

[woodturner-fran]

Yeah, I know, theres lots of them here. I've looked at them over and over again, and always earmarked one to have a go at, but was always put off by the noise from the manifold. So anyways, after a long time of looking at it now and again, I've taken the plunge and decided to make one. I'm going for the underhung type aka the terminator, principally because it seems to run quieter than the overhead one and also it has lower effective mass etc which would seem to be a good thing when you are depending on a very small cantilever to move the carriage.

So the first pics look like this (rough, needs tidying etc)





But what has got me excited about this was when I first hooked up the airline to see did it float (wanted to see if it would work before putting more hours in). The result was this video:

youtube airbearing link

which was very good, considering I hadn't really even cleaned the slides at all. Very very smooth and free, much better than I thought. Now I need to buy an aquarium pump to feed this thing as my diaphragm air compressor I normally use for the airbrush is way too noisy. I guess ebay here I come!

So commments welcome!

Fran

[woodturner-fran]

Ok,

I need some advice. I have done well so far getting this together and now I'm at the stage of needing an airpump. I went to my local pet store today and picked up an aquarium pump rated at 375l/h x 2 (ie 750l/h) and 1.75psi. So anyways, I hook it up and it ain't good enough - the carriage won't float when all the parts are on it. So while the volume seems to meet the specs, maybe the pressure is too low?

So can someone tell me what is the pressure I need. Ive seen other arms needing 5-10psi? Is that too high?

Some pics:








Fran