Virtuous circle: igus gives energy chains a new lease of life

In  recent times, plastics have become something of a bête noire in popular thinking, a pariah material of which the mere mention conjures up negative images. Nature documentaries have helped highlight the particular issues around single use plastics and their tendency to end up in the oceans, blighting our seas and beaches, being ingested by all manner of creatures, and even infiltrating the food chain.

It’s easy to forget that, for the most part, plastics have become so ubiquitous because they are so useful, as well as being low-cost. As with most technological developments, the failures can generally be attributed to human and systemic shortcomings rather than a fundamental flaw in the technology itself. Plastics are no more inherently bad than the internet, for example, but both have significant capacity to cause damage when used carelessly.

As a company whose entire business is based around plastics, igus is acutely aware of the associated image problem. Its polymer bearings and energy chains (e-chains) sit at the opposite end of the spectrum to single use plastics, designed to last for millions of cycles rather than thrown away after a brief, solitary moment of utility. Nonetheless, until recently, its energy chains – found everywhere from offshore rigs and cranes to windscreen wipers - were largely being sent to landfill once they reached the end of their long service lives.