In this paper, a new air bearing stage with magnetic preload and a linear motor has been developed for the small precision machine systems. The new air bearing stage is unique in the sense that permanent magnets attached bottom of the iron core of table are used not only for preloading air bearings in vertical direction but also for generating thrust force by current of the coil at base. The characteristics of air bearings using porous pads were analyzed with numerical method, and the magnetic circuit model was derived for linear motor for calculating required preload force and thrust force. A prototype of single axis miniature stage with size of 120(W)×120(L)×50(H) ㎣ was designed and fabricated and examined its performances, vertical stiffness, load capacity, thrust force and positioning resolution.
