Active Damping Control of an Air Bearing Stage with Magnetic Preloads

In this paper, we proposed an air bearing stage with active magnetic preloads in vertical directions compensating motion errors and attenuating vibrations to improve dynamic characteristics. This preloaded design gives simpler configuration of the stage, and active control of preload can be used for compensating motion errors by feedforward method. To improve dynamic characteristics, vibration of the table is monitored by an accelerometer, and controlled by a DSP based digital controller with integrator and band pass filters for suppressing roll and pitch vibration modes. The modes were evaluated by measuring frequency response functions, and compared with compensated responses. This showed effective results for suppressing poorly damped regenerative vibration of air bearings.