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Had a main hoist cable start to birdcage on me last Thursday
Honestly, it was on a 150-ton crawler lifting a big concrete panel. I felt a weird vibration and looked up to see the outer strands fraying and pushing out. I stopped the lift right away and called my rigger to get the load secured. Has anyone else had this happen with a newer cable, maybe under 6 months old?
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thea_knight5mo ago
Man, that's a scary sight. I used to think new cable was good cable, but seeing one fail early like that changed my mind for good. Could be a bad spooling job putting hidden kinks in it, or maybe it got dinged during shipping. Either way, you did the right thing shutting it down fast.
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allen.ruby5mo ago
Switched to a full inspection routine after a similar scare. Now I unspool all new cable on a clean tarp, check every inch under good light, and run it at low load for the first hour while watching temps. Caught two bad ones that way before they could blow.
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hall.quinn3mo ago
Hold up though, is all this really necessary for every single spool of cable? I've been running the same brand for years and never had a failure out of the box. Maybe you just got a bad batch from a bad supplier, not a sign that every new cable needs a full forensics exam before you can plug it in. Sounds like a lot of wasted time and a clean tarp for nothing if 99 out of 100 spools are just fine.
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