NewDamp™ Elastomers

Newport’s NewDamp Elastomer products offer a great alternative to pneumatic, air spring and other isolation mount technologies. Available in a variety of standard and custom designs, these mounts do not require electronic circuitry, air hoses or supporting hardware. NewDamp is an excellent value for applications that do not require the wider, low frequency isolation bandwidth of pneumatic or active isolation systems.

NewDamp Elastomers exhibit far higher damping than standard commercial elastomers and are cleanroom compatible. The high damping provides excellent structural stability and short settling time for high throughput machinery. Many NewDamp products offer Constant Natural Frequency (CNF) during load changes to further improve system performance.

Standard interfaces are available to integrate NewDamp products with breadboard and optical table grid arrays, Newport’s Microlock™ Breadboard Mounting Systems and Newport’s X95 Profiled Rail Systems. Interfaces are also available for use with Newport VH and LW Workstations. Custom OEM designs can be tuned to specific machinery needs.

NewDamp products exhibit a remarkably high damping with loss factors around 0.5 to 0.8 at room temperatures in the 10–100 Hz frequency range — this is two to five times better than other commercial elastomers. The high damping factor makes them ideal for supporting and damping the high acceleration amplitudes produced by very high throughput stages used in wafer positioning and electronic manufacturing applications. NewDamp elastomers can be built into equipment isolation supports and even custom machinery feet.

NewDamp is made from a highly engineered polyurethane U-16 compound that is fully cleanroom compatible. These products have been used in Class 100 Fabs to support wafer inspection and positioning systems. NewDamp polymers meet NASA spacecraft use outgassing requirements with a Total Mass Loss (TML) of only 0.72%; and Collected Volatile Condensable Material (CVCM) of only 0.01% (testing per the American Society of Testing and Materials standard E-595-77/84/90).

CNF (Constant Natural Frequency) is a complex property that reduces sensitivity to load deviations and offers a high degree of modal decoupling. The natural frequency of most elastomeric mounts lowers with increasing mass or increases with decreasing mass. This means that the vibration isolation characteristics will vary with load. NewDamp CNF products use special geometry profiled elastomers and mounting fixtures. These isolators accommodate changes in load with changes in stiffness — thus the stiffness to mass ratio is held constant. As a result, the CNF isolators deliver much better isolation than even softer conventional isolators do.

NewDamp Elastomers are available as elastic elements, to be incorporated into the customer’s vibration isolation system, with Newport standard interfaces (Microlock; X95; breadboard) as standard vibration isolators, and with Newport custom interface plates, as custom vibration isolators. Moreover, the Newport vibration control engineering group has developed proprietary software and test systems to customize elastomers for specific machinery needs. Once provided with primary machinery characteristics such as load, shock response, and resonance modes, Newport can develop a tuned solution. First articles can be produced quickly in our rapid prototype shops. Contact Newport Custom Products Group for your complete solution.