igus® Video of the Week – 10 top trends for modern machine tools

In this week’s video, igus highlights how its motion plastics are being used in modern machine tools to reduce costs and improve equipment performance. From lathes where hot chips occur to compact 5-axis milling centres and extremely fast linear robots, machine tools have to cope with a large number of challenges. Hot chips and aggressive cooling lubricants significantly shorten the service life of cables and hoses. The situation is exacerbated by increasingly smaller installation spaces and challenging rotating and pivoting axes. In the medium term, this leads to machine failures and, as a result, expensive downtimes. Downtimes have a negative impact on the most important quality characteristic of machines, namely productivity. The maintenance work needed to lubricate metal bearings also regularly results in a shutdown of the machine tool. Machine builders are looking for smart solutions in the context of Industry 4.0 as the degree of automation increases. Moreover, the growing pressure of costs in the world market is necessitating highly efficient assembly and production methods.