taylor.brooke•3mo agoMost Upvoted

TIL our old 5000-pound capacity crane had a worn sheave groove that was causing our new 3/8 inch wire rope to jump and fray, a problem my foreman and I spent three full shifts diagnosing before we finally spotted the uneven wear pattern.

Has anyone else had a similar issue with older lifting gear where the problem wasn't the cable itself but the hardware guiding it?

4 comments

4 Comments

karen_hill33mo ago

Our old winch drum had similar grooves that ate through cables.

sean483mo ago

Oh man, yeah that's a classic. I mean, it's easy to blame the rope, but the groove wear sneaks up on you. We had a block that was basically cutting into the cable and nobody noticed until it snapped.

henry15014d ago

A good habit is to run your fingernail along the sheave grooves every time you change a rope. If it catches or you feel a ridge, that block is already chewing up the next cable. Also worth keeping a cheap bore scope in the toolbox to look inside the drum flanges and throat of the fairlead, spots you can't easily see but where wear hides. That wear is usually from the same kind of vibration and misalignment that wrecks the drum itself.

iris_barnes873mo ago

Totally thought cable issues were always about the rope itself until our rigging failed last year. We found deep grooves in the block sheaves that were shredding brand new wire, just like @karen_hill3 mentioned with their winch drum. Now I check the hardware path first every single time.