Motion plastics manufacturer igus has expanded its international testing facilities to a total test laboratory footprint of more than 5500 m² of dedicated research space in order to accommodate its increasing product portfolio as well as enable continuous improvement of it product quality.

The newly enlarged test laboratory combines a wide range of testing areas for energy chains, highly flexible chainflex cables, iglidur plain bearings, drylin linear technology, low-cost automation components and igus:bike applications. New developments are expected to enable deeper and broader evaluation of product performance before anything reaches customers.

“We have expanded our test laboratory area to support faster innovation cycles and more comprehensive real-world testing scenarios,” says Ian Hewat of igus South Africa. “This means our customers benefit from even greater confidence that the components they use will reliably perform in their specific applications under the most demanding conditions.

“A major feature of the expanded facility is the new 1500 m² test area adding to existing dedicated outdoor and indoor test spaces. Customers can now benefit from testing environments that simulate real operating conditions including outdoor weather exposure, extreme temperatures down to -40 °C, cleanroom-compatible formulations and customer-specific application trials,” says Ian.

He adds that the test laboratory runs more than 15 000 individual tests across over 742 test stations every year. These include endurance runs, multi-axis stress tests and application-specific cycles such as long travel simulations for energy chains and dynamic loads for bearings. The vast amounts of data generated in the expanded facility feeds into igus’s online tools, including the service life calculator, product finders, CAD configurators and predictive maintenance tools. The end result is that these tools help engineers and procurement professionals more accurately define the right components for their projects.