Archive for November 25, 2011
When Westwind Air Bearings Ltd began marketing air lubricated spindles capable of speeds in excess of 100,000 rpm in 1963, it was not long before the company started receiving requests from both public and private research centres to produce high speed rotating devices to meet diverse special needs. These ranged from tiny, finger-tip size, infrared choppers running on helium gas in skin cancer detectors to much larger machines capable of testing centrifugally-arming artillery shell fuses at speeds up to 30,000 rpm. One of the most challenging, as well as long-lived projects, however, was undertaken under contract to Britain’s National Physical Laboratory (NPL). This involved developing machines to rotate glass prisms at the highest possible speeds for use in laser research.