Chainflex cables

Example 13: tested live!Container crane at50 m travel distanceIn the crane engineering industry, energy supply systemsprove their technical and economic strengths more andmore frequently. Flexibility, variability, and space-savinginstallation are only a few of the most important criteria.An important building block of an energy supply systemhas to do with the cables. Here, users expect a highdegree of operational reliability.In the Chainflex ® laboratory, igus ® cables undergo constanttests which can be used to obtain important informationon the service life of a cable and to derive improvementsfor the future structural design of the cable.However, the situation becomes very exciting if you get therare opportunity to remove cables from their real, toughapplications and can inspect them.Current inspectionThe Chainflex ® cable CF9.60.05 has been used in containercranes for many years; in the case presented here with a totaltravel distance of approx. 47 m. An inspection contract commissionedby the owner-operator was to present a performancebalance sheet after more than 40.000 chain kilometres anddetermine the date from which the next preventive maintenancework for the other equipment should be taken into account.Following the removal of the CF9.60.05, inspections wereperformed with the following objectives:1. outer jacket, abrasion behaviour, other damage;2. overall stranding, insulation behaviour of the individual cores;3. litz wire structural design, number of any possibly individualbroken wires which might be an indication of an earlyfailure of the entire cable.An igus ® energy supply system with a length of approx. 26 m in a stainless steel trough with middle band support.46