igus celebrates 25 yrs of Chainflex motion cables
December 11, 2015
By Manufacturing AUTOMATION
Dec. 11, 2015 – igus, a manufacturer of cable carriers and continuous-flex cable, is celebrating 25 years of offering specially designed flexible cables for continuous-flex applications.
The company says it “revolutionized the design of cable for moving applications” 25 years ago with the introduction of Chainflex, and has since been offering “ever-increasing” numbers of power, control, servo, robot, and data cables. Now, with more than 1,040 cables types available from stock, the company claims to provide reliable cable performance for up to 10 million cycles or 36 months.
In the development of Chainflex cables, igus says it drew from its experience as a player in the development and sale of energy chains. Company CEO Frank Blase explains “As a market leader for E-Chains, our advantage at igus is that we are able to develop and test both the cables and energy chains that protect them, together as a complete system.”
Inside the “industry’s largest test lab,” the company says more than 70 cable test rigs perform more than 2 billion test cycles each year. New testing machines enable acceleration speeds over 49 ft./s2 across a 164 ft. test run. A cryochamber allows temperature tests to -40 F, and new torsion attachments and the expansion of the outdoor installation area allows for additional testing under differnet application settings.
