Steel wire is an extremely useful and versatile material that can be found in many things you use everyday in the home, as well as in the car you drive. Steel wire is also useful in commercial, industrial and military applications—for cleaning, for spring-loaded devices, for reinforcing, for structural integrity, and even for making music.
However, not every piece of wire can be used for everything. Steel wire is manufactured to different levels of strength, elasticity and thickness for different purposes. Here’s a quick overview of 8 common types of steel wire.
Named for its use in piano strings, music wire could be considered the “work horse” of steel wire. Its high carbon content makes it a strong, durable, all-around wire that is excellent for high levels of stress and repeated loads (for example, in springs or surgical equipment).
Similar in structure to music wire, oil tempered wire is usually drawn to thicker diameters, then heated and “quenched” with oil to make it both strong and flexible. This wire is also used for spring applications, such as garage door springs.
Most commonly used in the brushes of street cleaners, broom wire is usually a strong, high-carbon wire that is galvanized or PVC coated to endure repeated friction.
This is a flexible coated wire that is commonly used to provide structure and flexibility, such as with heating and air ducts that have to curve around corners while retaining their shape.
This is steel wire that has simply been drawn to a certain diameter without any additional treatment or tempering. It’s a good all-around wire for bending into wire forms or springs, but it is unable to endure high amounts of stress the way music wire does. It’s frequently used in products like metal baskets, shopping carts, safety pins, and some auto parts.
This steel alloy wire is cold-drawn and heat-treated to be exceptionally strong, able to withstand shock and high-impact loads that the typical wire spring could not withstand. It’s an excellent choice for recoil springs in guns or in high performance vehicles.
High carbon content makes steel strong, but at the expense of flexibility. For applications where the wire needs to bend more easily, (like low-stress springs or coat hangers) low carbon steel is a better option.
Patenting refers to a specific treatment process by which steel wire is heated and quenched to make it stronger and more durable. Patent wire is useful for high tension applications and for wire rope.
Wire ropes are used in many industries worldwide, whether lifting objects in the construction industry or pulling cable cars up a mountainside. Wire ropes need to be strong and reliable to accomplish heavy lifting tasks, but what is the strongest wire rope?
The strongest steel wire rope is a 2 ½ inch thick 6 x 36 IWRC (independent wire rope core) cable with a breaking strength of 291 000 Kg. Only 20% of the total breaking strength is used when lifting objects to maintain a high safety margin and prevent the cable from failing.
Wire ropes are so much more than just a piece of wire attached to an object that needs to be lifted. If you would like to find out what makes a wire rope strong and how much it can lift, then read on:
A wire rope is known as a machine because it has many components that it relies on to give it the strength required. A wire rope consists of multiple steel wires that form individual strands laid in a spiral pattern around a core. The specific pattern that the cable is laid in will give it strength and flexibility and assist the cable in bending stress.
The strongest steel wire rope is a 2 ½ inch (64mm) 6 x 36 independent wire rope core (IWRC) with a Warrington seal. The 6 x 36 Wire rope offers the highest maximum breaking load in its class, 291 000kg.
Wire ropes are not utilized to carry or pull weight up to their maximum breaking load but rather only use 20-30% of this measure to maintain a large safety margin. Nevertheless, this is still very impressive.
A 2 ½ inch 6×36 cable can be used as individual strands and laid into a thicker wire rope to make it even stronger, but this will only be done for very limited one-off applications.
A strand pattern can be affected by the layers, the wires per layer, and the wire diameter. The following five patterns are the most commonly used in wire rope construction:
The strand direction and type of lay refer to how the wires are laid to make up a strand, either right or left twist, and how the strands are laid around the core either regular lay, lang lay, or alternate lay.
In Ingleside, Texas, a crane, known as the ‘Heavy lifting devise,’ is a 550-foot crane rated to lift 13000 metric tons in a single lift. The Crane has successfully lifted 10 000mT in a single lift and is mainly used to assemble large off-shore oil rigs. The Crane utilizes a 2 ½ inch 6 x 36 cable in an array of pulleys to achieve this massive lifting capacity.
Wire Rope manufacturer Redaelli achieved the Guinness World Record for the heaviest wire rope in the world in 2013. The 4003 meters (13 134ft) cable weighs 438 tons. The Wire Rope is 153mm (6.06 inches) thick and was manufactured to operate in the marine field.
It was designed to withstand the massive crushing pressures in the ocean at depths below 3000m (9 845ft) and only has a load limit of 1000 tons. The Wire Rope will be used in the recovery operation of large vessels at the bottom of the sea.
In the heavy lifting industry, three types of rope are recognized for their superior lifting and breaking strength abilities. Each rope type is much lighter and offers smaller diameters than steel wire rope.
The Strongest wire rope is a 2 ½ inch steel cable and has a breaking strength of 291 tonnes. Many different factors make a cable strong, mainly due to the rope’s thickness and spiral pattern. Many achievements have been made in the lifting industry with new technology in developing high-strength ropes equally as strong as wire rope. But wire rope is still used for heaving lifting in many industries.
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