Paradigm Shift
Wire ropes are safety-critical, mission-critical, and single points of failure.
This situation makes wire rope accidents always catastrophic, with all too many deaths or serious injuries, as well as heavy equipment damage. Therefore, wire rope failures are totally unacceptable and must be avoided at all cost.
In view of this situation, present wire rope maintenance and inspection procedures are inadequate.
Sole visual inspections are obsolete, ineffective, and dangerous because modern wire ropes, especially multistrand or IWRC ropes deteriorate internally with no visible indication.
MRT (Magnetic Wire Rope Testing) inspections are, more often than not, performed using second-rate instruments – with noisy and low-fidelity signals – by inspectors with questionable skills – combined with a large amount of educated or blind guesswork.
Wire rope inspection procedures and retirement policies are going through major changes that are described in my letter titled “WIRE ROPE INSPECTION: NEW PARADIGM”.
Please follow and peruse the links in my letter.
For further information, please contact me.
