Hoist cable shreaded!

[427SSSS]

Karl Bebout
Must be a CA thing, to want to rush into a law suit.

At least its not hot coffee.

Really? making a joke where someone could have been injured? Must be an AZ thing.
I'm not rushing in, I said I give them chance to make it right.

Had the hoist 4 years, only used it maybe 10 times.
It could be on me, I'll accept that. I'd like to here what their rep says.

[razerwire]

Would be safe to leave car on lift if the safety locks are engaged. If one or more are not engaged a 4x4 post and bottle jack could raise the corner up to engage safety catch. you need lift up high enough to string new cable anyway. Tell supplier what the cable is going to be used for, he may suggest anti twist cable. Give suppler all information you can, size of pulleys, drawing of route, pictures of end of ram and how ends locked on post. I'm in truss business and deliver trusses with cranes for 40 years FWIW.

[olddog]

I work in a factory that uses cable hoists to remove (1500 lb +/-) rolls of plastic film from a winder. I can count 21 hoists in my head, two of which are 5 ton hoists that reach the first floor and are located 40 to 50 feet above that. The rest are 1 and 2 ton units that are 20 foot high or less.

I have seen quite a few cables fail over the 41 years I have worked there. It's always scary and never pretty. Every failure, the root cause was the operators failure to properly check the hoist before use, which they are required to do and document every shift, by law. The problem is cables fail slowly over time and checking every shift (law) causes people to assume that if the previous guy did a good job checking, he doesn't have to. Pretty soon everyone is not doing a good inspection.

The simplest check is to let all the weight off the cable so you can flex it into a small loop. Use gloves for this. Then check for whiskers sticking out of the cable. Drag a rag up and down the cable and see if the rag gets caught on whiskers sticking out. The bend will expose the whiskers long before you will ever see them under tension. Always try to check an area on the cable that sees a lot of work bending around pulleys.

We are generally lifting 2 roll per hour 24 x 7 x 365. We size the hoist so the lift is no more than 3/4 the hoist rating, but target 2/3 the hoist rating. We replace the cable every 2 years, and sooner if whiskers show up. We will not operate a hoist with whiskers present. No failures since implementing this policy about 30 years ago. About 5 or 6 failures the 10 year period before that.

One more tid bit. How quickly the motor stops and starts puts a jerk factor onto the cable. The jerk can easily double the tension on the cable. If you are starting the motor with slack in the cable and the motor gets to full speed before the slack is out, the jerk factor could be 3 or 4 or 5 times the weight it is lifting, depending on the speed.

[DanEC]

Looks pretty good compared to mine after a project.

[ERA 626]

he motivated me to sweep my floor and wind up my air hose LOL... what a troll

[razerwire]

Every ones garage gets messy when you are doing projects. You need to inspect your lift regularly, pins loose or fell out, you let to much slack when you lower lift on stops and cable slips off pully, then when you raise next time cable is between frame and not on pully cutting cable. Cheaper the lift the more sloppy the pulleys and smaller diameter they are. Bigger pulleys and ones with greaseable bearings are better.

[t walgamuth]

Much cleaner than my garage.

[ng8264723]

Next time get a rotary

[jmarsey]

The way a man keeps his shop can tell you a lot. Such a good post and thank the OP for sharing this (lift failure) for the sake of discussion. I think failures and accidents are many times a result of complacency over time, much like a cable as mentioned. Complacency is the enemy and it’s everywhere, especially as we get older. I know I’ve certainly had my senior moments and remind myself more often now to pay attention. Don’t get yourself into a precarious situation by not thinking and F yourself up!

I have (2) 2-post lifts, and as a few have mentioned, thank you for reminding me to always use the stops! (Bendpak XPR-9S highly recommended)