What happens when a plastic energy chain reaches its maximum service life? Usually, it is simply disposed of and incinerated with other plastic waste. With its “igus green chainge recycling program”, the motion plastics specialist igus is now doing something completely new: users can send their plastic chains to igus for recycling – completely irrespective of the manufacturer. They can eliminate disposal costs and also receive a voucher for making purchases from igus. Customers and the environment both profit from this.
Due to the co-operation between Ultimaker and igus, the processing of the iglidur tribo-filaments in the Ultimaker 3D printers has become a lot easier. Neither special knowledge nor programming expertise is required to produce lubrication-free, low-wear components. The extensive material tests and the open source software “Cura” make this possible.
Using the new lubrication-free, lightweight and durable drylin NT-60 telescopic rail from igus, drawers with a length of up to 2,000 millimetres can be operated quietly in medical systems or laboratory automation. For this, igus relies entirely on wear-resistant and easy-to-clean iglidur tribo-polymers for the sliding elements.
Simple automation and a quick return on investment constitute the wish of many small and medium-sized enterprises. In particular, low-cost automation solutions such as delta robots, Cartesian robots or articulated arm robots from igus are enabled here by the use of plastic. The potential offered by cost-effective automation is demonstrated by the new ROIBOT Award. It characterises exciting Low Cost Robotics applications.
For the designers of Surf Evolution, the metallic bearings proved to be too maintenance-intensive and too expensive in their novel surf machines. Looking for an alternative, they quickly came across the motion plastics from igus. And the design engineers were thrilled, because the retrofitting significantly reduced the maintenance and saved 70 per cent in costs.