Key Takeaways:
Roundness testers must rotate the part or stylus with near-zero runout. Hydrostatic spindles supply the sub-micron, drift-free rotation that true roundness measurement requires.
Roundness Needs a Perfect Axis
A roundness measuring instrument compares the part's profile against an ideal circle. If the rotating axis itself has runout, that error is measured as if it were the part's—corrupting the result. The reference rotation must be near perfect.

Hydrostatic as the Reference
A hydrostatic spindle provides radial runout at or below 0.1 μm with no low-speed crawl and no thermal drift. That makes it an ideal reference axis for roundness testers, where the instrument's own error budget must be a tiny fraction of the tolerance being checked.
Practical Benefit
Because the film does not wear, the tester's reference accuracy stays constant for years, avoiding the creeping measurement error that wears mechanical spindles introduce.