Game-changing product launch as Igus redefines transport

Renowned globally for engineering innovation, Igus is set to exceed expectations with a head-turning, maintenance-free product that will really shake up the way we travel.

Igus believes it has created a real breakthrough in low-cost transportation that is nearly totally maintenance-free. Its UK debut is at The Engineering Expo, a new engineering-focused exhibition held at the NEC, Birmingham from 8-9 June.

The new product will remain a closely guarded secret until the big reveal at the new expo. Matthew Aldridge, managing director of Igus UK, will present the invention, the motivation for its design and how it works at a workshop talk that also covers the environmental benefits of using motion plastics – the umbrella name for many Igus products that assist movement without requiring lubrication – from 14.00 to 14.40 in Theatre 2.

Igus says the exciting low-carbon invention exemplifies the company’s global commitment to becoming carbon neutral by 2025, where it is investing heavily across all its products, materials and services to reduce carbon and excess waste. This includes Igus’s desire to create more ‘cradle to cradle’ polymer products, which can be successfully reused or recycled at the end of their working life, which also applies to the new head-turning product.

The new, multi-component product takes Igus’s raison d’être – to produce lubrication-free, maintenance-free engineered parts for a vast range of applications – to the next level in a clever, all lubrication-free assembly. “I have been at Igus for 25-years and have seen many product launches, but this new development has the potential to be truly game-changing for simple transportation. I am genuinely excited to launch it at the new Engineering Expo,” Matthew said. “By combining Igus’s deep plastics expertise with our environmental credentials, we have come up with something that we believe will change how people travel.”

The new product, which will be accessible to almost anybody when it is widely available, is just one of a suite of carefully engineered products on display at Engineering Expo. Also on show is the telescopic triflex R TRX (pictured) – a triflex R series twistable e-chain that is fully telescopic. This allows a 40% increase in length of the e-chain with no loss of strength or integrity, that avoids using more material in a longer, standard e-chain.

Igus will also exhibit the new chainflex CASE at Engineering Expo – a specially designed storage box for chainflex and other cable reels, that collects cables far better for both transportation and storage. In addition, Igus engineers are on-hand to demonstrate the FastLine service, a new online service to deliver customised injection-moulded plain bearings and thrust washers – that the customer specifies – in a maximum of just seven days. The easy-to-use, online iglidur plain bearing designer also shows you to see the manufacturing costs of other production methods to compare with.

Igus will also show visitors our iglidur coating materials, applied to several demonstration components, that assist in reducing wear and increasing motion on moving parts like drylin linear bearings. These are tribologically tested in Igus’s test laboratory and are self-lubricated with incorporated solid lubricants.