Key Takeaways:
Mechanical rotary tables rely on rolling bearings that wear, creep at low speed, and drift with heat. Hydrostatic rotary tables use a non-contact oil film for sub-micron runout, no crawl, and theoretically infinite life.
The Mechanical Table Limitation
A conventional rotary table supports its worktable on rolling bearings. Those bearings have solid contact friction, finite life, and can creep (crawl) at very low feed rates. Friction also generates heat that causes drift during long cycles.

The Hydrostatic Difference
A hydrostatic rotary table replaces rolling contact with a pressurized oil film. The worktable floats non-contact on 3–50 μm of oil, so there is no wear, no crawl at low speed, and no friction heat. Radial runout stays at or below 0.1 μm.
Quantified Advantages
Hydrostatic support delivers 5–10× the stiffness of rolling bearings, oil-film stiffness above 500 N/μm, and theoretically infinite life. For precision work, the comparison is not close—hydrostatic is the superior foundation.