Had a brutal day last Tuesday when my luffing jib cable snapped mid-lift

I was moving a 12-ton HVAC unit on a hospital site in Cleveland and the cable just gave out with a bang - no warning at all, thank god nobody was underneath. Anyone else ever deal with a sudden cable failure on a luffing jib, and did you figure out what caused it?

2 comments

2 Comments

sandra_bennett591mo ago

Makes me think how often we ignore small problems until they blow up into big ones.

murphy.aaron1mo ago

You mentioned it gave with a bang, no warning at all. In my experience, that usually points to a fatigue crack in the wire itself, not a sudden overload. I had a similar thing happen on a crew in Detroit about five years back, and we found out after pulling the cable apart that the core had been slowly corroding from the inside out due to moisture getting in through the outer jacket. Might be worth checking the maintenance logs to see when it was last inspected and lubricated, since that can weaken the cable way before any outer strands start to fray. Take this with a grain of salt though, every site is different.