Plasma® Sling Service Life: What Our Break Test Revealed

Why We’re Testing Plasma® Slings for Service Life?

Inro

– So we had a customer reach out to us. They’ve had some Plasma® eye and eye rope slings that have been in service since 2023, used in some relatively severe conditions. These slings have lifted just under 39 million pounds during their time in service.

What’s this customer want to know? How has this affected them? Do they still have anything left in there?

The ask: break them and let ’em know.

So we thought, “Why not show you the results?” Do Plasma® slings have a service life? Let’s find out.

Woo!

– We’re not even done yet.

Why We’re Breaking These Plasma® Slings

– My name is Ben. This is The Lifting & Rigging Channel. And today, I’m joined by Rob Leonberger and he’s an account manager at Mazzella. Rob, what are we doing today?

– We’re going to break some stuff.

– All right. Why?

– One of my customers, they’re very safe. They are constantly inspecting these, having us help them inspect them, putting out inspection material for their employees to do a better job inspecting, all with the sole purpose of finding out if we can make their slings last longer and how much longer we can get them to last.

Plasma® vs Wire Rope Slings for Die Handling

They were using wire rope slings and they damaged them a lot. They damaged their dies, and the injury rate was higher than what the safety department was happy with.

In this process, the operator has to maneuver the slings a lot. They get very heavy. And there’s a lot of shoulder injuries that were happening. So when we started working with them, they asked us to help them with a solution to decrease the injuries in their facility, and that’s when we introduced them to the Plasma® slings.

Plasma® Slings Features and Benefits

These are an inch and a eighth Plasma® slings. They are a cordage assembly and one of the things that makes them special is there’s only less than 1% stretch. So when they’re put into service, they don’t have to worry about one leg stretching different than the other because they all will only stretch less than 1%, which is great.

The second thing that makes these extremely beneficial is they’re extremely light. And it’s an inch and a eighth. So if you were to use a wire rope sling at an inch and a eighth, it’d be very heavy. It wouldn’t be as flexible. That is another positive benefit to the Plasma® is they’re very flexible for the operator to move into place and to utilize.

Customer Application: Automotive Die Lifting

– What is this customer? What do they do? And then what are they using this for?

– They’re in the automotive manufacturing area and what they do is these are used in their die lifting and die maintenance area. So basically they’re in contact with dies and metal corners on a daily, daily basis.

Usage Data: Lifts, Loads, Total Weight Moved

– They’ve got some concerns with these. They’ve been in use. Tell me how long have these been in use?

– So the sling you have there in your hand, this sling we pulled at 22 months. That is a long way from the first initial 12 months that we were able to provide them at first.

In that, we were really able to capture a lot of data. In the one year of the sling’s use, it had 260 lifts, in a set of four lifting up dies, 260 lifts. And the average that they received was 42 tons per lift as an average. With that being said, in that year, they did 21,840,000 pounds moved.

– Woo!

– That’s a lot, but we’re not even done yet. That was only the first year. When we got to the total in 22 months, we’re at 462 lifts. And in that 462 lifts, we’re able to calculate that they moved 38,800,000 pounds.

– Wow. So that’s per lift and they use four of these per lift. Is that correct?

– That is correct.

– Wow. So we’re going to find out exactly how much 38 million-ish, 39 million-ish pounds, how much that takes out of these slings, right?

– I think,

A) it’s going to be fun, right? I mean we’re going to have a good time. But

B) I think we’re getting some really good information for the customer.

Field Concerns: Flattened Eyes and Wear

– Yeah, so we’re going to go take these over and we’re going to inspect them just to find out if there’s any reason why they should be removed from service. What were some of the reasons that the customer was concerned that they might not have the life left in them?

– So one of the things that concerns them the most is when you look at the eye. The eye begins to smash. What do we have left? ‘Cause if we can push it, they really want to look at doing that.

And that is the one thing they always talk to me about is, “The eyes are getting really flat. Come out here and look.”

– Well, let’s inspect them and then we can test them and we can find out.

How to Inspect Plasma® Slings

All right, Rob, so before we get these in the test bed, we’re inspecting them, what are we looking for?

Proper Tagging and Identification

– In the field, the first thing we’re always going to check for, which us account managers call it low hanging fruit, is we always make sure there’s a tag. Because without a tag, we don’t go any further because it needs to be pulled from service immediately.

Checking For Damage To Sling Protection (if applicable)

Mostly with Plasma, you can see where it’s been braided in, and then it gets from thick to thin. So this is the braid. So we’re not really looking at this much except for damage in this SX chafe material. And that’s going to be like a pull. And if there is a pull, then we start to dig deeper. But all this is good.

You can see in the eye, some of that chafe material has been pulled.

– So is this removal criteria or this is just the protection?

– This is not removal criteria. This is like the outer casing on a round sling. It doesn’t have anything to do with capacity. It’s there to protect the sling on the inside.

Feeling for Defects or Non-uniformity

What we look for, for obvious, is a bulge in the Plasma® strands underneath as you feel it where they would have given way. Where they have, start to break away, it’ll either be bulgy or it gets thin.

– So basically uniformity up until you get to this, where the braid is.

– Correct. And that’s what makes it hard, right? For the Plasmas, if we have no chafe material on there, this is what we’re looking at throughout. I mean, that’s the Plasma®. So you can see if we’re inspecting this by itself, without the chafe material, we can very easily get inside of it and look.

Inspecting Plasma Rope

We’re looking for melting, fraying, where it would have maybe a cut. ‘Cause now you can see that there’s these little hairs that are coming up.

– Yeah.

– That’s nothing to be worried about. We also see where you can begin to see the discoloration in the yarn. This is where we start to look and dig deeper to see if there is anything wrong with it, okay? Dig deeper for cuts, abrasions, anything like that.

Besides the obvious, right now, I’m not seeing anything with this Plasma® that would cause me any concern. I mean you can see, the feel of, it’s uniform.

Perform Critical Pre-Use Inspections

At the end of the day, Ben, even though we do these very in-depth inspections for our customers, the customer still has to have their employee do their daily inspections.

– If you see purple?

– Pull it.

– Pull it.

Will these slings make MBL?

Is there any reason why when we get them in the test bed, we don’t think that they’re going to make it to their minimum breaking mode?

– The only thing that I think would cause us to wonder is, we always look at, the eye of the sling gets a little deformed, but it’s because it’s being, where it’s lifted on the pin, it begins to flatten and you see where it kind of it gets shiny. And that’s because of it moving on the pin and the same thing, getting that heat that happens.

And then if we’re concerned, we can do the same thing. We can break into the Plasma® and then begin checking the eye itself. And as you can see, when we check this eye, we’re starting to see the material pull away and get those little, they look like burn balls, but they’re just where the sling has gotten-

– It’s like chafed on itself.

– Correct.

– So is this removal criteria then?

– It’s definitely a concern to pause and look a little deeper. At this point in time, with the way it looks, I would not pull it, but I would put it on a three-month watch. I’d be going out checking it every three months. That may be overkill, but I’d rather do more.

Break Test # 1

We’re going to break some stuff.

The gate is dropping. Right now, the gate is dropping for us to get ready for our test. That loud bang means the door is secure. And we’re going to get ready to pull test this Plasma® sling.

And we are climbing. We’re at 10,000 pounds. And right now, we’re at about 15,000 pounds. We’re at 20,000 pounds. We’re to the halfway point. We are at 60,000 pounds. Almost at half of the minimum break strength of 147,000 pounds. 90,000 pounds.

*BANG*

The break was 96,300 pounds.

Break Test # 2

All righty. Here we go again. As we begin our ascent, 9,000 pounds. All right, we’re at 30,000. 57. 70,000 pounds. 98,000. 105. 106,000.

*BANG*

106,800. 106,800 pounds.

Break Test # 3

All right, so what we’re doing now is conducting a test on the third and final sling. Two have already gone through the test bed. This is the last one we’re going to test and see how the results compare.

30,000 pounds. We are right at vertical, vertical capacity of 30,000 pounds. All right, we’re at 56,000 pounds. At 60,000 pounds, now we are double the vertical capacity. 80,000 pounds. 90,000 pounds.

*BANG*

96,140. Break at 96,140 pounds.

Results Summary: Missed MBL and Failure Location

So the customer wanted us to perform this test to see if they can lengthen the life because the outside looks great. The inside definitely told a different story.

What we found is on the first sling, this one, we broke at little over 96,000 pounds. The second sling, we broke in the exact same spot at 106,000 pounds. And the third sling broke in the exact same spot, again around 96,000 pounds.

– So they wanted to extend the life. You told us earlier that the first test was done at 18 months. This one’s at 22 months. They got a lot of lifts going on in between there. Do we know when these have a retirement life? We can say they do now, right?

– We can obviously say that they have a retirement life. We saved one sling to send back to the manufacturer to have them perform a test up there, so we can compare all the information to see if we can find that sweet spot.

Recommendation: 18‑Month Retirement for Heavy Service

– So based on the data, what are you going to tell the customer?

– Probably, right now, revert back to the 18 months. Lets get some more data from the manufacturer and then take it step by step from there.

Lessons Learned: Inspections, WLL, Training, Records

– All right, so what did we learn today? Do Plasma® rope slings have a service life? Yes.

In order to figure out exactly what that service life is, we’re going to have to send our data back to the manufacturer. We’re going to work with them to figure out exactly when these slings need to be pulled out of service.

So what does that mean for the customer? The customer’s probably going to have to reevaluate when they take these slings out of service.

Whatever your lifting needs, Mazzella is here to help. From synthetic rope, wire rope, slings, and hardware, we can cover all your rigging needs, not to mention inspections, services, training, and engineer products. We’ve got all your bases covered.

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