Maintenance-free grippers from the 3D printer

Carecos Kosmetik GmbH was faced with the following problem: a product change was due and the company had to have new grippers made for its packaging machines, which grip the lids and screw them onto containers. Carecos Kosmetik had previously opted for the complex milling process of an aluminium gripper. This cost up to 10,000 euros per unit and took around six weeks to produce. Too long a waiting time in an industrial sector where, in the dawning Industry 4.0 era, it is increasingly important to be able to produce small batches economically. In the search for a more flexible 3D-printed alternative, filaments had to be found that would work reliably even under the influence of constant wear. This is because almost every element of a gripper is movable and slides on surfaces, shafts and pins as it moves.

Due to the high costs and long production time of the metal grippers, Carecos Kosmetik GmbH initially tried 3D-printing the grippers using standard plastics such as ABS and PLA. However, the printing processes did not deliver satisfactory results. The manufacturer then turned to us and found the tribologically optimised filament iglidur i150, an extremely strong and at the same time very impact-resistant material for 3D printing, with which a gripper can be printed within 10 to 12 hours.
Metallic parts often have to be fitted with separate bearing bushings or lubricated in the application. Thanks to the use of iglidur i150 in 3D printing, the company was able to save up to 85 per cent of the costs and 70 per cent of the production time compared to the previously selected aluminium formats. Furthermore, plastic grippers are seven times lighter than metal grippers. In addition to iglidur i150, igus offers various other filaments for printing wear-resistant parts in a wide range of application scenarios. Compared to standard materials such as polylactide (PLA), these are up to 50 times more wear-resistant and can be processed on all commercially available 3D printers.