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Plastic bearings used in Powerbully tracked vehicle wins gold manus® award
Application Overview:
- System: tracked vehicle
- Industry: all-terrain vehicles
- Customer requirement: fail-safe bearing points despite mud, sludge and mire
- igus solution: iglide TX1 plain bearings
Kässbohrer Geländefahrzeug AG receives the golden manus for the use of iglide plain bearings on the PowerBully's oscillating and tensioning axles.
Transporting drill assemblies, cranes, lifting platforms and excavators through tough terrain is the task of the PowerBully tracked vehicle made by Kässbohrer Geländefahrzeug AG, based in Laupheim. All components must be absolutely reliable and able to handle trips through mud, sludge and mire. There must be no failures, since the nearest road is often kilometers away.
Plain bearings in the chassis must be just as robust. Despite extensive sealing, dirt still sometimes reaches the bearing points. If the bearings then get stuck, the chain could, in the worst case, get detached. To prevent this, the vehicle manufacturers use iglide TX1 plain bearing bushes on the four oscillating axles and the tensioning axle. igus manufactured the bushes specifically for Kässbohrer Geländefahrzeug AG in unprecedented dimensions and tested them.
In search of the right material
"Due to the positive experiences with igus plain bearings in other projects, I approached Reiner Nusser at igus in May 2020," recalls Marius Holder. "We then set up a trial test with three different igus materials, as well as a metallic bearing and the previous turned bearing of the competitor, and did a long-term test under real conditions on the shaft from Kässbohrer," explains Reiner Nusser, Technical Sales Consultant at igus GmbH.
"Here, iglide TX1 turned out to be the optimal material for use in the PowerBully." The tests were carried out on the standard heavy-load pivoting test rigs in the in-house 3,800 square metre igus laboratory in Cologne. To determine the wear rate, the inner diameter of the bearings was measured before and after the test using an outside micrometre. The test shows that TX1 has a service life eight times longer than the previous plain bearing. In numbers: the turned plastic bearing has the highest wear rate in dry condition with approx. 832µm/km, while iglidur Q2 has the lowest with approx. 73.5µm/km. In lubricated condition, the metallic bearing shows the highest wear rate (approx. 199µm/km), iglide TX1 the lowest (approx. 70µm/km).
