Smart plastics for industry 4.0 predictive maintenance

In this week’s video, learn more about igus smart plastics, new technologies designed to enable Industry 4.0 applications. This evolution of proven igus cable, energy chain and linear bearing products embeds intelligence into its motion plastics via the addition of sensing, monitoring and communications. Using smart plastics, customers can increase plant availability, maximise uptime and reduce costs through condition monitoring and predictive maintenance.

igus smart plastics represent the next step for motion plastics: adding intelligence and networking to enable Industry 4.0 smart factories via automated condition monitoring and predictive maintenance, improving reliability and reducing costs. Intelligent cables, energy chains and linear guides continuously monitor themselves, providing performance data and early warning of critical wear. isense encompasses a range of sensing technologies and monitoring modules, while networking with the icom communication module provides direct integration with the customer's IT infrastructure, and optionally the igus data cloud.

isense continuously monitors the service life of your e-chain, cable or linear guide via real-time sensor measurements and calculations using the parameters of your system. These measurements are referenced against aggregated test data from the extensive igus test laboratory database to reliably predict service life and smooth functioning in real-world operation. Alerts are sent when measured values exceed thresholds, allowing timely maintenance or replacement.