Rolamite

A Rolamite is a technology for very low friction bearings developed by Sandia National Laboratories in the 1960s.

After testing an S-shaped metal foil, which he found to be unstable to support surfaces, the engineer inserted rollers into the S-shaped bends of the band, producing a mechanical assembly that has very low friction in one direction and high stiffness transversely.

The Rolamite uses a stressed metal band and counter-rotating rollers within an enclosure to create a linear bearing device that loses very little energy to friction.

[4] Tests by Sandia indicated that Rolamite mechanisms demonstrated friction coefficients as low as 0.0005, an order of magnitude better than ball bearings at the time.

There are known Rolamite versions that contain two bands that work in reciprocate parallel for more accurate kinematic transmission at the reverse motion.