Bearings maker igus has developed its first isense plain bearing series with five iglidur materials for predictive maintenance of machines.
With the intelligent isense plain bearings, users receive a lubrication-free solution that provides information about their wear.
Maintenance can be planned while machine and system failures are prevented.
“The catalogue range includes five materials with which we can cover a large part of highly stressed applications”, says Stefan Loockmann-Rittich, Division Manager iglidur Plain Bearing Technology at igus GmbH.
Among the materials, the FDA-compliant material iglidur A180, is specifically designed for use in the food industry.
The intelligent plain bearings are available in three dimensions with an inner diameter of 20, 30 and 40 mm.
Further sizes and materials will follow.
System connection
To connect the isense plain bearings, igus has four suitable cables with an oil-resistant and media-resistant PUR outer jacket, in four standard lengths of 1 to 10 m, in its portfolio.
There is also a choice between two connector types.
The sensors measured data can be integrated by the machine and equipment operators into their systems in different ways.
igus offers three readout units for this purpose: either the user can manually read out all plug-in points, or install a control unit with a red/green display on the machine, which provides information about the condition of the plain bearings.
Another possibility is the connection to icom.plus, where a radio module sends the sensor data by wireless transmission to the communication module.
From here, the integration of data to the IoT, cloud system or to the customer network is possible on a wire-bound basis.
