igus cuts chain opening to 2 seconds

Placing the ‘opener’ at the start of the chain, it is simply pushed forward by hand as its ‘wings’ rapidly unlocks and opens each crossbars 90-degrees without damaging the chain.

The energy chain is closed in a similar way with the opener guided along the side of the chain, automatically closing the plastic crossbars, which only need to be locked into place.

Developed by igus for use on its own assembly lines, the company says that a German mechanical engineer using the opener saved two working days in a single one year, compared to manually opening and closing the crossbars.