Porous material is usually processed before applied as porous restrictor.In order to explore the reasonable mechanical processing method of porous air bearing and the variation of pore structure and permeability during the mechanical processing,the influence of mechanical processing method on porous material’s pore structure was studied,the value and uniformity of porous material’s permeability were analyzed and measured during the mechanical processing.The static performance of manufactured porous air bearing was also tested.The results indicate that general machining such as turning and grinding will make the porous material’s surface blocked,the common methods to recover the permeability include corrosion and lapping.The lapping is the optimum process to meet the requirements of porous materials.The permeability recovery degree is associated with the particle size of lapping fluid,and the permeability after repeated lapping is larger than that after single lapping,which indicates that the permeability of porous material can be controlled by lapping method to obtain excellent porous air bearing.