As an important equipment for material handling in factory workshops, indoor cranes often need to start and stop frequently, and move back and forth over long distances.

Because the crane mobile power supply position is higher and the distance is long, hoisting heavy objects has a certain degree of danger, which brings great inconvenience to daily maintenance. Therefore, the mobile power supply part has convenient maintenance, strong stability, long life, and no inspection It is especially important. This also puts forward high mechanical performance requirements for sports cables. Traditional trolley wires and suspension wires often ignore these details, resulting in breakdowns and maintenance, affecting production efficiency.

Suspension line: hoisting multiple cables on a steel frame, reciprocating contraction and expansion movement. Most of the cables used by cranes have a heavy weight, which leads to the stress concentration of the cables suspended on the steel structure (red frame 1 position) and excessive tension. Due to the effects of gravity and repeated contraction and stretching, the bending of the cable is aggravated (red frame 1 and 2), and the bending radius is too small, which is easy to cause fatigue and damage of the cable, accelerate the broken core of the cable, and cause failure. As shown below:

Trolley wire: Several conductors are laid in parallel along the running track of the mobile equipment, and a collector that can take electricity from the conductor is installed. The collector runs synchronously with the equipment and obtains power from the conductor at any time.

The obvious problem of the trolley line is that the inspection and maintenance are too frequent, and the parts are worn and consumed quickly. Some parts need to be inspected every 1-3 months to check for wear, corrosion and other problems and replace them. If it is used frequently, the workshop is too dusty, the temperature is high, and there is water, acid, alkali, and fog in the environment, it is necessary to strengthen daily inspection and maintenance.

Therefore, when we choose cables, we cannot simply meet the electrical requirements, but must focus on the mechanical properties of the cables. Take the igus high-flex cable as an example, selecting from the following aspects can well avoid the above-mentioned problems.

1. Have a minimum bending radius:

Cable outer diameter as low as 4 times

The bending radius of the moving cable is very important to its service life. If the bending radius used exceeds the minimum bending radius of the cable, it will accelerate the loss of the cable life and cause the broken core. After hundreds of millions of experimental tests, igus has designed a cable structure suitable for sports, which can meet the application of small bending radius and ensure its long service life.

2. Armored extruded inner and outer sheath

The inner and outer sheaths formed by high-pressure extrusion (see the figure below) ensure that the twisted structure is effectively fixed in the longitudinal direction, making the cable structure compact, and the relative displacement of the core wire and the sheath is not easy to occur during the movement, which effectively prevents the wear and tear of the core wire. fracture.

Left: (Inner sheath extrusion molding) Right: Outer sheath extrusion molding

3. Flat and tight shielding layer,

Achieve up to 90% optical coverage

Loose braided or twisted bands will greatly reduce the EMC protection capability, and the shielding layer will quickly fail due to the break of the shielded wire. Igus cable shielding layer adopts optimized weaving angle, the shielding layer is flat and compact, with high torsion resistance, and the optical coverage rate is as high as 90%.

4. Adopt special cable structure for long stroke

When selecting a sports cable, you must consider the travel factor. We must know that long-distance signal transmission has a large degree of attenuation under static conditions. Once it runs, if the cable structure is loose, the stability of signal transmission will be greatly reduced. Aiming at this point, the igus chainflex® high-flexible cable adopts a special structure, which can reach a long stroke of 400 meters.

5. Test Experiment and Warranty Commitment

igus has the largest sports cable testing laboratory in the industry, with 2 billion cycles of testing and 1.4 million electrical measurements per year. It uses rigorous experimental data to ensure the life of the cable, ensuring the safety and reliability of the cable and reducing maintenance costs. Based on continuous test data, igus® chainflex® high-flex cables can provide up to 36 months of warranty commitments according to different application conditions.

6. The igus cable suitable for cranes can be selected with confidence

A variety of different outer sheaths can meet different usage requirements. Different cable schemes can be selected according to specific usage conditions to achieve the highest cost performance. For example, the economical cables CF880 and CF885 series have German quality without cost problems.

In addition, igus chainflex® high-flex cables are equipped with igus drag chains to replace the mobile power supply method of trolley wires and suspension cables (see the previous two articles for details), which can reduce cable usage by 22%!

The traditional mobile power supply method is not necessarily the best choice. With the development of industrial automation, environmental protection, convenience, and labor cost reduction are the key to improving product competitiveness. It is also necessary to make technological innovations in line with the development of the times. Igus' pursuit of continuous innovation in products! Editor/Xia Changwang