Heavy-duty applications for igus® bearings in agriculture

Equipment for ploughing, called cultivators, is primarily used today to loosen up the arable land in order to mix organic matter and prepare for next season.

The "Karat 9" of the company Lemken GmbH & Co. KG is an intensive cultivator, and features self-lubricating plastic plain bearings from igus® in the bearing points, for which external lubrication can be eliminated completely.

"Insufficient lubrication was a real problem for applications in the cultivators. With metallic solutions the bearing points had to be lubricated once a day, so that the bearings can perform their duties properly. This constituted, depending on the working width of the cultivator, up to one hour of work per day."

- Lars Heier, Director of Marketing at Lemken

Plastic bearings withstand high forces
High forces are often at work in agriculture with the use of heavy equipment, which need to be very rugged. Therefore, in earlier times, metallic bearings were the first option. These bearings have a very limited service life, especially with pivoting movements, because lubricants may not be evenly distributed and the same points on the bearing are stressed again and again. Here, plastic plain bearings display their advantages, as pivoting movements do not harm them and there is no lubricant to displace.

Another advantage lies in the dry operation of the bearings, since dirt cannot accumulate on them. igus® can bank on over 40 catalog materials for the most varied requirements, such as for heavy-duty applications found in the agricultural sector. Plain bearings from the all-rounder iglide® G300 prove themselves in the cultivator Karat 9, by withstanding a compressive strength of 80 MPa. For higher loads igus® also provides, for example, catalogue materials up to 120 MPa, such as iglide® Q2 or iglide® TX1 up to 250 MPa. In addition to the standard range, more than 100 special solutions are also available, with which more specific applications can be implemented.