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Wire Ropes are a critical component of a lifting process, and it’s a piece of equipment that’s being used across diverse industries. One of the most important aspects of choosing the right wire rope for your project, is to make sure you pick a rope built by a reputed and certified manufacturer of heavy lifting equipment; and secondly you must entrust the task of choosing the right wire rope to somebody who is an experienced hand at using wire ropes and understands its various characteristics. This will ensure you will be able to choose the right wire rope for a particular task.
Wire ropes must be used safely and there are certain tips that you must keep in mind to make sure you are able to use them safely. Let’s take a look at some of them:
The safe is an outcome of ensuring that the rope you have chosen is a perfect fit for handling the weight of the mass that needs to be moved. So, before you actually choose a wire rope for your application, make sure you calculate the mass of the objective to move and factor in the conditions in which it will be moved (weather etc.) The environment in which the lifting process will be conducted will have a bearing on whether an object is lifted in fits and starts, or the lifting process will be seamlessly handled. What you also need to consider is the frequency of the use of the wire rope. If it’s going to be used regularly, you need a wire rope that has more abrasive resistance than most.
So, how does all this impact the safe us of the wire rope? It ensures that the wire rope doesn’t break in the middle of an operation, and put everybody’s lives at risk.
If you aren't inspecting the wire rope daily before use, you are throwing open the doors for its unsafe use. Your wire rope is subject to tremendous pressure every time it’s used and therefore, it must be visually inspected for wear and tear every time its used. If you don’t, you won’t be able to identify broken wires or kinks that your wire rope might be suffering from.
While inspecting the wire rope, make sure there are no kinks in the wire rope, because such ropes need to be replaced immediately. In case you find visible broken wires, check whether these broken wires are within permissible limits as far as the application, you are using it for, is concerned. If it is over and above the permissible limits, you will need to change the rope. You might also find that certain sections of the wire rope have flattened or bird caged, even in such cases, wire ropes are dangerous to use.
There are times when you can cut the damaged portion of the wire rope, but you must be very sure that doing this can help you use the wire rope for the task on hand and that too safely.
There is a direct relation between and using it safely. Your wire rope is a sum of many parts, and to put it more specifically, it is made up of different strands of rope. And each strand needs to move over the other when the rope is either bent or when it straightens. If this does not happen, the rope will suffer from even more wear and tear and will be susceptible to damage. Regular lubrication ensures all the moving parts of the rope slide seamlessly over one another.
What you must also guard against is corrosion and lubrication can help you protect your wire rope against corrosion as well. A film of lubricant that seeps deep into the very core of the wire rope is great for preventing corrosion. Corrosion helps protect your rope from rust which in turn ensures that the useful life of your wire rope increases. Your wire rope might be exposed to humidity or even water through the course of its use, and lubrication ensures it doesn’t suffer adversely as a result of this exposure.
These are some of the many tips that should be kept in mind to ensure the highest standards of safety while using a wire rope. You might not realize it, but the fact that you are ensuring the safety of your wire rope, means you are improving other safety standards amongst various others.
