Additive manufacturing meets industry 4.0 igus makes 3D printed tribo-components intelligent

By OEM Update Editorial July 5, 2021 8:34 pm IST

A world’s first: sensors integrated in printed components indicate maintenance requirements and warn of overload.

Even today, 3D printed wear-resistant parts from igus often have the same service life as original parts. Now igus goes one step further and makes the printed components intelligent. Manufactured in filament printing, they warn against overload and report their maintenance requirements. The special feature: for the first time, the sensors are directly “printed into” the parts. As a result, they not only have extremely short delivery times and low costs but also feature useful Industry 4.0 options. Additive Manufacturing and Industry 4.0 – the two themes that are changing the industry forever.

igus engineers have now succeeded in combining both in a single production step: for the first time, sensors are printed into the additively manufactured tribo-component using multi-material printing. Tom Krause, Head of Additive Production at igus says, “We have now achieved a real breakthrough with the smart 3D printed bearing. In this way, predictive maintenance is also possible for special parts in a cost-saving manner.” Long before the failure, the intelligent 3D printed component signals that a replacement is imminent. It can also detect overload in order to stop the application immediately and prevent further damage to the bearing position and the entire system.

Wear or load are monitored

igus has been producing intelligent wear resistant parts for energy chains, plain bearings and linear guides since 2016. At the start, plain bearings were manufactured from iglidur I3 in laser sintering and the intelligence was subsequently introduced in a second processing step. In this case, however, the production of intelligent special parts in small quantities is complex and expensive, as the downstream work steps are very specifically designed for the respective component. Using a new process, igus developers are now able to produce such intelligent wear-resistant parts in just a single work step. No further processing steps are necessary and intelligent special wear parts can be produced cost-effectively from 5 working days.

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