After a long day at the beach, enjoy your hotel room with a drink from the good old minibar. This is very different in some hotels. To the surprise of the guests, JEEVES shows up – a robot from the Munich-based company Robotise Technologies GmbH. The waitressing service robot replaces up to 300 minibars and relieves hotels in times of a shortage of skilled labour. The engineers rely on space-saving and fail-safe energy chains from igus to guide the sensitive energy and data cables so that they can do their job without disruption.
The safe and efficient guidance of hoses, corrugated tubes and cables in energy chains is a major challenge in various industrial applications. To counter this problem, igus now offers new accessories for their E4Q series: a special outer link for parallel guidance of hoses and a new hose clamp. These additions allow for simple and safe installation of corrugated tubes and hoses. The links with guide channel make it easier to retrofit PMA clips while the hose clamp makes sure that hoses are securely fastened.
Bikes instead of cars: for the mobility transition to work, cities need more parking facilities without encroaching too much impact on the cityscape. For this purpose, the Japanese manufacturer Giken has built a garage called Eco Cycle, which parks bicycles completely automatically underground. To ensure the reliability of the robot garage, the engineers used robust and maintenance-free energy chains from igus for the lift’s cable guidance system.
The motion plastics specialist igus is expanding their drive technology range with new toothed belt axes: the compact, robust and lubrication-free drylin ZLX high-performance series. The anodised aluminium profile of the axes has been developed in a completely new geometric design. As a result, drylin ZLX not only looks like a mechanical engineering profile, but can also be quickly and easily integrated into a modular profile system. With a load capacity of 150N and speeds of up to 3m/s, the new toothed belt axis is suitable for automated production lines, pick-and-place systems and 3D printers, among others.
After RCYL, a bicycle made from 50 per cent recycled fishing nets, igus is setting the next milestone for sustainable mobility: the motion plastics specialist has developed the first bicycle frame made from recyclable plastic material for the German e-bike manufacturer Advanced Bikes, which is manufactured using injection moulding. Decades of expertise in plastics manufacturing and experience with the RCYL bike are channelled into the development of both the frame and new bicycle components made from high-performance plastics.