A ventilation fan includes a shaft assembly, a rotor, a motor housing, and a bearing housing. The shaft assembly defines a first port and a second port. The rotor has a rotor first portion disposed about a first portion of the shaft assembly and a rotor second portion that extends from the rotor first portion. The rotor first portion defines a rotor port. The motor housing is disposed about a second portion of the shaft assembly. The motor housing defines a housing port. The bearing housing is operatively connected to the motor housing. The bearing housing is disposed about a third portion of the shaft assembly.

A linear guide includes an elongate guide body and a bearing cage, on the inner sides of which fluid pressure bearings are provided. The bearing cage moves along the guide body via the bearings. The bearing cage includes at least three interconnected plates. The plates each have an inner surface facing the guide body, an outer surface facing away from the guide body and side surfaces between the inner and the outer surface. Each plate is connected to a first other plate in a first end region and connected to a second other plate in an opposite second end region. For each of the plates: the first other plate, with its inner surface, abuts against a side surface of the considered plate, while the considered plate, with its inner surface, abuts against a side surface of the second other plate in the second end region of the considered plate.

The various technologies presented herein relate to fabrication and operation of a heat exchanger that is configured to extract heat from an underlying substrate. Heat can be extracted by way of an air gap formed between an impeller and a baseplate. By utilizing a pump to create an initial air gap that is further maintained by rotation of the impeller relative to the baseplate, a spring can be utilized that can apply a force of greater magnitude to the impeller than is used in a conventional approach, thus enabling the weight of the impeller to be negligible with respect to a width of the air gap, thereby conferring the desirable feature of orientation independence with respect to gravity with no performance degradation.

An apparatus for conveying a substrate includes a base along which the substrate is conveyed, a first upward gas ejecting section, a second upward gas ejecting section and a third upward gas ejecting section disposed over the base, the third upward gas ejecting section being disposed between the first and second upward gas ejecting sections, and a first downward gas ejecting section and a second downward gas ejecting section disposed above and facing respective portions of the third upward gas ejecting section. Gas ejected upward from the first, second and third upward gas ejecting sections floats the substrate. The substrate is subjected to pressure by gas ejected downward from the first and second downward gas ejecting sections. The first and second downward gas ejecting sections are spaced to provide a working area therebetween and through which the substrate is irradiated with a laser beam.

A non-contact bearing is provided. In a suspended state, the non-contact bearing is disposed with a predetermined spacing to a first guide surface. The non-contact bearing includes: a bearing body and a micro electro mechanical layer. The bearing body includes a second guide surface, wherein the second guide surface is opposite to the first guide surface. The micro electro mechanical layer is disposed on the second guide surface, and includes at least one micro sensor and/or at least one micro actuator.

Certain exemplary embodiments can provide a system, machine, device, manufacture, circuit, composition of matter, and/or user interface adapted for and/or resulting from, and/or a method and/or machine-readable medium comprising machine-implementable instructions for, activities that can comprise and/or relate to, positioning a rotating shaft within a machine via an externally-pressured gas bearing system.

An intershaft seal assembly for maintaining separation between a piston ring and a pair of mating rings is presented. The assembly includes a piston ring interposed between forward and aft mating rings and a plurality of hydrodynamic grooves disposed along a sealing face of each mating ring. Each hydrodynamic groove further includes at least two adjoining steps wherein each step is defined by a base wall arranged to decrease depthwise in the direction opposite to rotation of an inner shaft. Two adjoining base walls define a base shoulder which locally redirects potion of a longitudinal flow within the groove to form an outward flow in the direction of the piston ring. Base walls are bounded by and intersect a pair of side walls with at least one side shoulder thereon which narrows the groove widthwise and locally redirects portion of the longitudinal flow to form a lateral flow from one side wall toward another side wall. Outward and lateral flows cooperate, with or without the longitudinal flow, to increase fluid pressure and maintain separation between the piston ring and the mating rings.

A container blank handling apparatus (5) for a container blank trimming system (1) for metallic tubular container blanks comprises first and second air bearing body portions having respective arcuate inner surfaces. The first and second body portions are arranged to be moveable with respect to one another between a closed configuration of the apparatus in which the inner surfaces are substantially contiguous so as to form a substantially continuous bearing surface which defines a container blank receiving volume of the apparatus, and an open configuration of the apparatus in which the first and second body portions spaced apart from one another such that the inner surfaces are not contiguous with one another. One of the first and second body portions defines an air delivery pathway therethrough, the air delivery pathway terminating in at least one air delivery aperture in the inner surface of the body portion such that the air delivery pathway is contiguous with the air delivery aperture, the pathway and aperture being arranged for supply of air therethrough into the container blank receiving volume.

A circumferential seal assembly capable of dividing a gas into separate flow paths before communication between a rotatable runner and a pair of seal rings is presented. The assembly includes an annular seal housing, a rotatable runner, a pair of annular seal rings, and a plurality of groove structures. Each groove structure separates a source flow communicated into a feed groove so that a portion enters at least two grooves to form a longitudinal flow therein. Each groove includes at least two adjoining steps defined by base walls. The base walls are arranged along the groove to decrease depthwise opposite to rotation of the rotatable runner. Two adjoining base walls are disposed about a base shoulder. Each base shoulder locally redirects the longitudinal flow to form an outward radial flow in the direction of one annular seal ring. The base walls are bounded by and intersect a pair of side walls. Each side wall includes at least one side shoulder which narrows the groove widthwise and locally redirects the longitudinal flow away from the side wall to form a lateral flow in the direction of the other side wall. Each reduction to the volume of the gas at the downstream end of each groove structure increases pressure and enhances the stiffness of a thin-film layer between each annular seal ring and the rotatable runner.

A gas floated workpiece supporting apparatus includes a gas upward ejector ejecting gas upward, and a gas downward ejector located at an upper side from the gas upward ejector and ejecting gas downward. The gas downward ejector is installed at a position where the gas downward ejector ejects the gas downward from above a plate-shaped workpiece to apply pressure to the plate-shaped workpiece that is floated and supported by the gas ejected from the gas upward ejector, whereby a uniform floating amount supports the plate-shaped workpiece with high flatness at a time of floating and supporting the plate-shaped workpiece.