First sustainable plain bearing materials from igus made of regranulated tribo-plastics
25/10/2022 igus UK Ltd
The sustainable iglidur materials ECO H, ECO P, ECO A180 and ECO G consist of regranulates and thus conserve resources
Social change, responsibility towards the environment and the changed handling of plastics are also leaving their mark on industry. For customers for whom a more sustainable design of their moving application is important, igus now offers an interesting alternative: Four new materials made of recycled plastic are available in the new iglidur ECO program.
At its headquarters in Cologne, the motion plastics specialist igus develops and tests tribologically optimized high-performance plastics for moving applications: sliding, linear, ball or spherical plain bearings, energy chains, cables, materials for 3D printing or low-cost robotics based on plastics. The advantages of tribo-polymers are obvious. They are lightweight, low-maintenance and require no additional lubrication during their lifetime. This is a great advantage, because in Germany alone around one million tons of lubricating oil are sold every year, a large part of which ends up in the environment. By using iglidur plain bearing technology, this contamination can be reduced and at the same time the service life of the application can be increased. With the plain bearing range made of ECO materials, igus now starts even earlier in the product life cycle and uses regranulate for the production of new plain bearings.
Four lubrication- and maintenance-free iglidur ECO materials
The new series consists of 97 to 100 percent regranulated iglidur materialsn. For this purpose , for example, sprues are used in production, a classic waste product in injection molding production. The new plain bearing range includes four materials that demonstrate their advantages in a wide variety of applications: iglidur ECO H is particularly temperature- and media-resistant and is therefore suitable for highly corrosive and hot environments. iglidur ECO P offers high mechanical strength with low moisture absorption and is therefore optimized for outdoor use. . The cost-effective material iglidur ECO A180 is suitable for price-sensitive applications, while iglidur ECO G is extremely robust and versatile.
Less microplastics due to abrasion-resistant plastics
All ECO materials, like the entire iglidur range of plain bearings, are lubricant-free and the service life can be calculated online. The new ECO series and the other 58 iglidur materials prove in 15,000 tribological tests per year how abrasion- and wear-resistant they are. Less abrasion means less contamination by microplastics and a significantly longer service life. An exchange of the machine or the individual components is not necessary so quickly. If these components are additionally "intelligent" and accurately predict their service life in real operation, maintenance and replacement intervals can be dispensed with. The plain bearing is replaced exactly when necessary. This can also increase the service life of the individual components in the application. This means that no component that still works has to be routinely replaced.
Print this articleFor more information, please contact:
Erin Kemal
igus UK Ltd
51a Caswell Road
Brackmills Industrial Estate
Northampton
Northamptonshire
NN4 7PW
Tel: +44 (0)1604 677240
Email: sales@igus.co.uk
Web: https://www.igus.co.uk
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