Key Questions
The following key questions are answered in this module:
What personal protective equipment should be worn when working around wire ropes?
When working around wire ropes, one should wear: heavy leather gloves to protect your hands from cuts, abrasions, bruises, and rop burn, steel-toed shoes, to protect your feet from dropped loads or equipment, a hard hat, eye protection, and hearing protection.
What are ways to improve safety while working with and around wire ropes?
You can improve safety by: selecting a wire rope to match the conditions it will experience during use; only use wire ropes for jobs they are intended for; properly maintain all equipment the rope is being used with; never lubricate a rope using heavy grease, used engine oil, or any other lubricant that might corrode or damage the rope; always break in a newly installed wire rope; keep tension on the rope and never allow slack when a load is applied; and never overload a wire rope.
Why and how do you break in a wire rope?
Breaking in a wire rope allows the strands and wires within the rope to settle and align properly with one another. To properly break in a wire rope, run the rope with no load attached through the rope's entire operating cycle. Keep tension on the rope while doing this so that no slack or kinks develop. hen, apply a light load equal to about 10 percent of the working load limit to the rope and run the rope through its entire operating cycle again at a slow speed.
What are some of the conditions that can cause wire ropes to become dangerous?
Immediately notify your supervisor if you see: Abrasion or wear, bird caging starts occurring, broken wires start to appear, heat damage, kinking or bending, high stranding, corrosion, or crushed wire starts occurring.