"chainflex®" cables specially for energy chains can also directly help to reduce energy consumption. As a result of the latest igus® tests, conservative calculations show that high quality jacket and insulating materials - depending on the combination of cross-section and cables - allow between 5 and 30 percent of weight to be saved. With the result that the power demand of the drives can be reduced by 17 percent.
On the one hand, optimized jacket mixtures, designed for use in energy chains, enable a low abrasion resistance to be achieved. Secondly, high quality jacket materials can be extruded with particularly thin walls, which saves up to 18 percent weight compared with conventional cables. Just two factors, therefore, which can be used to reduce the required drive power.
On top of that is the matter of insulating materials: Particularly high quality materials allow much higher currents to be produced with the same electrical cross-sections, or conversely the cross-sections can often be reduced without negatively affecting the electrical performance. This makes weight reductions up to 30 percent possible.