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Serious question about switching from wire rope to chain on my swing anchor
After 12 years running a 12-inch cutterhead on the Mississippi near Baton Rouge, I swapped my 3/4-inch wire rope for 5/8-inch chain last month and now I can feel every bottom change through the boom, but has anyone else noticed more wear on the sheave pins with chain instead of wire?
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phoenix_grant3420d ago
Man you're making me think about the time I swapped chains on my old anchor rig and found out the hard way that the sheave grooves were actually worn down from years of wire rope digging into them. That chain started catching and grinding on the rough spots, wore out a set of pins in like three weeks before I figured out what was happening. Ended up having to replace the whole sheave assembly because the grooves were too far gone to file smooth.
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leodavis19d ago
That reminds me, buddy of mine ran into the same thing on his crane barge. He switched to chain and ended up snapping a sheave pin clean in two during a lift. Turned out the vibration from the chain links banging through the grooves was way worse than the wire rope.
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