Wire rope Q

RLM fired this volley in news:gcgo1n$3pa$ snipped-for-privacy@aioe.org:

OR, you can use a TEENSY little marlin spike, and back-braid the eye!

LLoyd

Both processes are used. Crimping deforms the barrel, as in crimping a terminal onto a copper wire. Swaging causes the barrel metal to both deform and flow into the nooks and crannies of the steel wire (which also deforms).

There is a nicopress barrel splice for solid wire where the barrel is swaged down onto the wire, and then the barrel and wire within is formed (crimped) into a zigzag.

Joe Gwinn

Backbraiding wire rope is hard, and takes a long time and a lot of band aids to learn. And it is not allowed according to a lot of OSHA standards. Poor boy eye splices the same.

Steve

"Welding a stranded cable would be virtually impossible."

Really??? Tell that to the Navy Aviation Boatswain's Mates working on aircraft carriers who regularly weld cables together whenever it's time to replace the purchase cables of the Arrresting Gear engines. The new purchase cable end is welded to a smaller cable "pig tail" and the old cable end and then the old cable is pulled until all of the new cable length has replaced all of the old ones around the various sheaves and pulleys in the system. The weld job needs to be precise and strong or else the cable connection would get stuck somewhere in the system or would break causing hours and hours worth of corrective actions rendering the aircraft carrier virtually crippled.

"P D Fritz" wrote: Really??? Tell that to the Navy Aviation Boatswain's Mates working on

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Are you sure they are really *welding* the cables, or are you just using the term to mean "joining." Welding two cables end-to-end would require fusion of the individual strands. Why would they do something so difficult when there are easier ways?

Yes, they were/are welding. They were/are not brazing or soldering. They use electric arc welders using 7018 stick electrodes!!! They do it because they find it to be the fastest, the easiest and the strongest way to accomplish the required job.

I was one of them.

I used to weld the old cable to the new when I was replacing the cables on masonry block boom trucks. I would first weld a knob on the end of each cable then weld the two ends together. Using the old cable to pull the new one through, I then used a cutoff wheel on a 4" grinder and cut the old cable off. It worked a lot better that brazing them together and I never had one break during the threading of the new cable. Steve

"Up North" wrote: I used to weld the old cable to the new when I was replacing the cables on

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Okay, Steve, I concede. The technique you describe sounds like it would work. Is that the way you did it, PD Fritz? I apologize for being so skeptical. My mind was stuck on the idea that the individual strands had to be joined.

It threw me for a minute, too. The trick on this weld job is that it doesn't have to be strong or flexible, since it isn't in normal service. It only has to hold the two ends together long enough to pull the old cable out and the new cable into the sheave system. Then the weld and the old cable gets cut off, and the new cable gets properly terminated in place.

When you think about it, that makes perfect sense.

-->--

Replacing 1 1/8" cable on an oil drilling rig was interesting. The cable came in very long rolls. The first time it was strung, it was a booger bear. But when the required amount was on the sheaves, blocks, and drums, the cable was just dogged off. Since the pulling point at the top of the derrick and the drill floor level remained the same, only the cable rigged up would travel.

Usage was computed in ton/miles. When that was reached, the cable was pulled/threaded through all the sheaves and blocks until new replaced old, then the old was cut and deadmanned. It was all hard dirty dangerous work, especially the first time. After that, there was a Chinese handcuff thing that would join the end of an old section to a new spool, so no need to take it all off. Still, though, at times, it was necessary to start from scratch.

Steve

They are probably welding the end of a new cable (on a reel) to the end of the used one--then they will pull out the old & reel in the new.

jerry

No apology required. Sure, it does sound basically similar. The cables I'm talking about though are 1 7/16 inch in diameter with each single strand approximately around

1/10". The "pigtail cable" that is about 3/4" in diameter and 2 feet long is connected(welded) in between the new cable and the old cable to allow maximum flexibility and maneuverability during its passage through the various pulleys and fairlead sheaves in the system. Sometimes, even chain links are used as a pigtail instead of a cable. I prefer the chain link method myself.

Dang. 1 7/16" stuff. I thought 1 1/8" derrick cable was big.

Steve