Polymer bearings manufacturer igus UK presented its coveted manus awards to two British engineering companies, Trailerteq and MBP Concepts.
The manus competition is a plastic bearing design innovation contest. Held every two years, it sees an independent panel of academics and industry specialists select the winners.
Winning the manus award for ‘Most Eye Catching Design’ was MBP Concepts with its Tyligo product. The Tyligo trailer, designed and developed in Britain, uses the iglidur sleeve bearing from igus for the critical function of folding and opening the trailer by sliding the front bracket on the main stainless steel beam.
Key requirements for the trailer were that the bearing should combine high load bearing capacity with long life, small size and minimal maintenance requirements.
The second winner on the day was Trailerteq, who won the manus ‘Plastic Bearing Innovation’ award. Trailerteq is a British manufacturing company, based in Lancashire, and it used igus’ range of iglidur polymer bearings in its compact Rapid Deployment Transport (RDT) trailer. The igus bearing was used after it was discovered that a phosphor-bronze bearing used in the main arm, linking the body of the RDT with the towing vehicles, was prone to premature failure.
Igus claims its iglidur polymer bearings range have extremely high compressive strength coupled with high elasticity. In addition, they require no lubrication or other maintenance.
Matthew Aldridge, director of igus UK, said: “We selected these two worthy winners for the igus UK manus awards, as they both used plastic bearings to perform a key function while transforming the performance of their product and helping reduce costs. We are always pleased to see plastic bearings being used in unusual applications, and for solving engineering problems that would be difficult to address in any other way.”
