April 8, 2019
soLITE® launched into series production
soLITE® launched into series production at bauma, TEUFELBERGER unveils secret of its construction
Unlike other rope manufacturers that offer conventional fiber ropes for lifting applications, TEUFELBERGER, in cooperation with LIEBHERR, has chosen a different approach, especially when it comes to mobile, crawler, and tower cranes.
TEUFELBERGER is the only steel wire and fiber rope specialist to have developed and implemented a fiber rope that features a unique fiber-rope-based steel wire rope construction.
We have designed our high performing steel wire rope construction by using the best and high strength synthetic fiber. The impressive result is a combination of the advantages of a high performance steel wire rope with those of a high strength fiber rope.
In tests conducted on about 20 cranes, the rope's low weight has helped achieve particularly great advantages: in many cases, it is possible to fit soLITE® on the crane by hand and without auxiliary reeving winches. In addition, re-reeving the hook block becomes easier and faster.
However, soLITE® fiber ropes now permit the redundant determination of the point of discard.
The protective cover consists of fibers of various colours that, due to their consistency, wear differently. As soon as the red core becomes visible, soLITE® must be discarded.
In combination with the bending cycle counter on the crane or the machine, soLITE® can be used on almost any reeving system.
In effect since 2017, the FEM 5.024 standard also defines guidelines, particularly regarding the point of discard for the safe use of high performance fiber ropes on cranes. When the point of discard has been reached, soLITE®, thanks to its design, still has 100 % of its breaking load. This makes it even safer than a steel wire rope.
Following its success on tower cranes, soLITE® has recently been mounted also on ship cranes. There, the ropes support the handling of heavy loads of up to 5,000 tons. Another new interesting area for soLITE® are other lifting applications where ropes are exposed to a particularly high number of bending cycles such as on storage and retrieval machines.