igus test laboratory: research on 4,000m²

Tech up, cost down - at igus we manufacture our materials and products according to this motto. These offer you a long service life, which extends the operating time of your machines and applications, eliminates maintenance work and reduces costs. Our engineers consider workpiece quality and safety (that is, workpiece resilience and service life) as important criteria in development. Every igus product is tested thoroughly before it is made available for sale. To this end, we have been operating our own test laboratory since 1985. It's not only the industry's largest test laboratory for tribopolymers in terms of area, but it also conducts the highest number of product tests and test procedures.

What is tested?

Our facilities for testing applications and materials cover a total of more than 4,000m². Every business sector has its own test laboratory, and we test some product areas together:
 

• 2,000m² outdoor test area for energy chains and chainflex cables with particularly long travels
• 1,500m² test area for chainflex cables in our own energy chains
• 300m² test area for iglidur plain bearings, drylin linear bearings and Low Cost Automation - the latter partly under real conditions in quality assurance
• NEW: 200m² test area for igus:bike and bicycle components

How many tests are conducted in the igus laboratory?

Annually, a large number of tests and material examinations are conducted in the numerous test facilities:
 

• Over 15,000 tests in total, including around 4,000 for e-chains and chainflex and around 11,000 for dry-tech (rotating, swivelling, linear, tumbling, heated, underwater etc.).
• 10 billion e-chain cycles
• 3,500 tested cables
• 450 test rigs for bearings
• 400 customer-specific tests

What happens to the test data?

The use of testing data does not stop after development. We have been developing innovative online tools since 2001 and sensor-based smart plastics since 2016, which use the database of our test laboratory results. With these tools, the economic efficiency and reliability of our products can be determined quickly and very easily online around the clock. This means a high degree of transparency for our customers, enabling engineers to find the most cost-effective, functioning solution to their problem. More than 40 tools are available to you free of charge, including: