Under its vision of ‘plastics for longer life’, igus develops tribologically optimised motion plastic products designed to extend the service life of their machines and eliminate maintenance work, thus reducing costs. As part of its commitment to customer success, these advanced engineering materials are then tested under real-world conditions to ensure their service life can be reliably calculated, verified and guaranteed.
The dry-tech test laboratory conducts over 10,000 tests per annum, including more than 1,000 specific customer application tests. 52 test rigs carry out tests – 135 trillion test motions per annum – on every type of igus dry-tech bearing technology, including plain bearings, linear bearings, ball bearings, screw drives and robotic joints. They are subjected to a range of friction, panning and rotation tests, both long and short stroke, under a variety of light, medium and heavy (up to 250MPa) loading, as well as in extreme environments, including underwater and in heated operation. Each year, igus develops over 250 new triboplastic compounds, all of which are subjected to this thorough testing regime to verify their wear properties and determine their service life.
