Stainless steel wire ropes – how to use them right?

Stainless steel wire ropes and chains are essential marine products, which are mostly used in loading ships. However, these highly important marine products are little understood but abused extensively. Just because the rope is made of steel, does not mean they are indestructible. They may not be soft like your chain, but they need to be taken care of well to ensure that they are used to their utmost potential. This is particularly of more importance for ensuring safety – mainly while loading goods on and off the ship in order to avoid any accident or injury. In order to do that it is crucial to understand these components a bit more clearly.

When it comes to strength and durability, Crosby products are given preference over others. The construction and design of the components is such that products are highly resilient and safe to use. This is why Crosby chain, sling, wires or other products are given preference when it comes to marine or other heavy-duty applications. Here are a few things that Crosby’s Leading Distributor reveals about the products and using them the most appropriate way:

Stainless Steel Wire Rope and regular rope are not very different – both are create in the same fashion – but materials used are different. When making regular ropes, strands of natural or synthetic fibres are intertwined to add more strength and sturdiness, and the same is done to metal wires.

For the formation of metal wires, a core of metal or fibre is taken onto which multi-wired strands are wrapped around. Herein, the core is of utmost importance as it decides the strength and flexibility. The number of strands used in making also decides the behaviour of wire. Therefore, it is quite important to choose the correct rope configurations for heavy-duty applications. Decision is usually quite tough and only an experienced individual can choose the best suited configuration for a particular application.

Steelwire rope suppliers generally offer two types of ropes – regular lay and lang lay. Actually, they are categorised on the basis of the wires are laid. In the regular frame – strands are laid in way that the wires in the strands seem to be in the opposite direction of the strand. It means that the wires are parallel to the rope’s axis. Making it clearer, wires are laid in the horizontal direction but the strands are twisted in the vertical. On the other hand, lang lay wires are opposite to the regular lay. The direction of the wires laid is horizontal whereas the strands are twisted in vertical. It means, wires and strands remain in the same direction.

Talking about their strength and durability, regular lay is more flexible and has more compressive strength than the other. Lang lay type finds application only in the case when the ends of the wires are to be kept fixed.

To ensure you make the right choice for stainless steel wire rope:

• Consider the load capacity or the safe load and make sure you do not exceed the maximum limit
• Consider how the rope would behave while passing through sheaves while loading or unloading