At its headquarters in Cologne, Igus develops and tests tribologically optimized high-performance plastics for moving applications: Plain, linear, ball or spherical bearings, energy chains, cables, materials for 3D printing or even 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 service life. This is a major advantage, as around one million tons of lubricating oil are sold every year in Germany alone, a large proportion of which ends up in the environment. By using Iglidur plain bearing technology, this pollution can be reduced and the service life of the application increased at the same time. With the range of plain bearings made from ECO materials, Igus is now starting even earlier in the product life cycle and using regranulate for the production of new plain bearings.

Four lubrication- and maintenance-free materials

The new series consists of 97 to 100 percent regranulated Iglidur materials. For example, sprues, a classic waste product in injection molding production, are used during production. The new plain bearing range includes four materials that demonstrate their advantages in a wide variety of applications: Iglidur ECO H is particularly resistant to temperature and media 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 thanks to abrasion-resistant plastics

Like the entire Iglidur plain bearing range, all ECO materials are lubricant-free and their service life can be calculated online. This is because the new ECO series and the other 58 Iglidur materials prove their abrasion and wear resistance in 15,000 tribological tests per year. Less abrasion means less contamination from microplastics and a significantly longer service life. The machine or individual components do not need to be replaced so quickly. If these components are also "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 it is necessary. This can also increase the service life of the individual components in the application. This means that no component that is still working needs to be routinely replaced.