What wire rope does for our lighting and sound company.
By Robert G.
10/07/07
Wire rope is one of the greatest inventions for my sound and lighting company. We have found many uses for wire rope. Certainly when we are hanging lighting equipment. You see insurance is very tough to get in this industry and when your wire rope meets their specifications you know your all set. We have used up to 75 light fixtures in some of our stage set ups. Just imagine if we used some type of imitation wire rope. We would probably end up hurting someone. We hang some of our laser lights 80 feet in the air and some of them weigh about 45 pounds.
We also use wire rope for hanging speakers. Do you know how much some of our speakers weigh that hang off a truss? Up to about 110 pounds. Without wire rope we could never do large shows or arenas. We use Bilco for our wire rope needs they give us great services.
The last thing you want is your wire rope breaking and falling. Here are different things to look for in your wire rope. Fatigue failure is when you subject your wire rope to very heavy loads over sometimes very tiny small sheaves. These breaks in the strands or valleys as they call them are mostly caused my strand nicking. Strand nicking is when a single or many strands are removed from the rope. Remember small sheaves can cause a great deal of issues with your wire rope. Sometimes this happens just as a result of normal wear of the wire rope and tear on the rope. This is all caused by the small strands of the rope rubbing against each other during extended or normal operation.
Well Frank the rope for wire rope comes from rods. Wire rods to make wire rope is rolled from steel ignots and is usually about 1/2 to 3/8 of an inch in diameter. These ignots must all be uniform in quality and be free of any imperfections and irregularities. Then these are covered by mill scale and actually pickled. The wire rope is pickled with a form of acid and then the acid is removed with lime and lubricated with a kind of talc or something similar. For a better quality wire rope you should be sure that the wire rope is made from a large number of small wires all very high in carbon content.
Well wire rope is manufactured from many rods or a wire strand that creates rotating layer around a central fixed rod or wire. For instance a wire strand with one central wire and a layer of 6 wires around it would create a seven wire strand. Now if you were to add another layer of 12 wires to the existing layer those wires would then become a 19 wire strand and so forth and so on. So in describing the name of wire rope the first number tells you haw many strands there are and the second number tells you how many strands are in each wire. For instance a wire rope usually called hoisting rope 6 X 19 would have six stands and nineteen wires in each strand. Hope this doesn't confuse anybody and it makes your wire rope decision a little easier.
Wire rope in rural ropes in Europe for their multi lane roads. The IAM says that this might reduce the number of car accidents in the country. These wire rope central barriers are being installed in New Zealand and soon to possibly be on british roads. These wire rope barriers have been effective in preventing head on collisions and its strength, versatility and low cost have proved effective in some countries already. Imagine if these were made with nylon slings. This system is also looking to improve the rating on the road. Unfortunately for motorcyclists this road improvement only spells certain death. Some have labeled these wire rope barriers cheese cutters.
Wire rope was invented by John Roebling in about 1841 at the Allegheny Portage Railroad in Pennsylvania first used wire rope to replace hemp rope for getting the canal boats over the Allegheny Mountains. Now I suppose you can guess other uses for wire rope . Wire rope is used for cranes, elevators, ski lifts, trolleys, communication lines, ship rigging, bridges, airplanes, and submarine netting. Let's examine the bridge. A bridge is a structure that is built over an obstacle such as a valley a river railroad tracks to make the other side accessible. There are three main types of bridges. A beam an arch and only one depends highly on wire rope. This is called a suspension bridge. A suspension bridge can support the longest span and uses wire rope. Without the invention of wire rope we would not be able to cross from Staten Island to New York City. John Roebling was then commissioned to make the Brooklyn Bridge. The Brooklyn Bridge begun in 1870 and completed by his own son in 1883. This bridge was the first conceived to use steel in it's construction and use stays with wore rope descending from the cables.
The world’s most powerful cranes, no matter how high they may reach into the sky, would be worthless without the simple hook at the end of the crane’s wire rope. These hooks are known as snatch blocks, and they make the final connection between the crane and whatever is being lifted into the air. Snatch blocks come in all sizes, from the very small to the gigantic, and you may have your mile high cranes and their nearly unbreakable wire rope, but without snatch blocks, nothing would ever be lifted into the air. Funny name, serious business.
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