From art to science

Matthew Aldridge, MD at igus, explains: “Recently, we’ve seen a market trend towards the Internet of Things or Industry 4.0. igus is supporting its customers in this move and transition by adding intelligence to its products through smart plastics.”

By embedding sensors into its products, igus unlocks the power of IoT to continuously monitor the performance of its bearings, cables and energy chains in real-world customer applications. Comparing live data with the igus test data, igus can accurate predict the lifetime of its products in the field. “No longer is maintenance an art,” says Aldridge, “it’s a science.”

Being able to predict when maintenance is required on a machine, almost eliminates the risk of unplanned downtime. In the automotive industry, for example, unplanned downtime can cost upwards of £10,000 potential profit loss per minute. For port, shipyard and container handling cranes, unplanned downtime can be extremely costly in terms of lost productivity. 

igus has produced a short video: www.igus.co.uk/MAsmartplastics