Yale XXX New Rope!!!

NickfromWI

NickfromWI

Participating member
Location
Los Angeles, CA
Ok, the guys at Yale have been working on a rope for military purposes. They've been designing/testing it for like 2 years now. I talked to them a while ago and we think this thing might be a great rigging line. It's the world's first triple-braid!

The cover is not for strength, it's just for chafe and UV protection. It's basically a suped-up pretty version of XTC.

The 2nd layer is a high-tech material called Seblon. It's like nylon. Stretchy. The cool part is that the recoil is very slow. Like if you stretched a rubberband until it broke...but when it broke it didn't snap back. It slowly returns to it's original length. However, it is stronger than some of the high-modulus lines (like technora).

Then the core is PBO/Xylon (same stuff they use for their PoBon rope. SUPER STRONG. It's degrades quickly in sunlight but that's not an issue since it's covered by TWO covers!!!!!

This is a rope for dumping BIG LOADS!!! You can shock load the hell out of this thing. Basically how it works is as the load is applied, the Seblon takes the weight. It stretches to absorb the shock. After the load is brought to near static, the PBO/Xylon holds the strength as you lower the piece.

Once you get it to the ground and untie it (splices are better here), the Seblan begins it's slow recoil. By the time you get the line hauled back up to climber/bucket operator it will be at it's original length and ready to go for another run!

The splice is crucial. The PBO/Xylon does not react well in the knotting. How do you splice a triple-braid rope? Well, I'm not allowed to talk about that yet. We put a lot of work in to refining this splice. Yale did permit me to show you pictures of the just about finished splice.

So, the question is...would you use this? The rope would not cost very much. The Seblon is actually cheaper that polypropylene (the cheap plasticky stuff they use to make water ski pull lines). The outer cover is just polyester and the PBO/Xylon is expensive but the diameter is so thin, the price isn't crazy. A 200' piece of 7/16ths might run about $335.00. Sounds like a lot but Sherrill sells 200' of 3/4" stablebraid for $269.00

There are two sizes...7/16ths and 5/8ths. That's all they have now. The smaller size has an ABS of 29,600lbs. But get this...due to the complicated contruction, Yale is reccomending a .75:1 working load limit. This means that with this rope, you can easily and safely shock load a piece that weighs 22,200lbs!!! AND, to make it even better, it still has all it's same shock absorbing traits at loads as small as 800lbs!!! With one line, you can minimize shock to all your other equipment, the tree, and whoever is running the rope.

I got to do a bit of testing with it...not in a tree, though. It's crazy stuff. It looks squishy but feels only a bit different than 3-strand while it's running through your hands.

So the question is...would you use it? This might be the Zubat of rigging lines.

The fun part....The name they are thinking about using is Yale XXX. They showed me a picture of a magazine ad (that will suposedly soon be on their website)...it looks like the movie-posters you see at the theatre...where the credits are at the bottom, there is some technical info. Then over to the side, the rating is....you guessed it...XXX

love
nick
 

Attachments

  • 9609-yale.xxx 004.webp
    9609-yale.xxx 004.webp
    32.8 KB · Views: 229
When I got to test it, they dropped a 4,000lb weight 8ft. It was caught by a HUGE pulley (which itself weighed over 30lbs!) It then took about 4.5 wraps around what amounted to a big portawrap.

They are sending out the final shipment to the US Army next week. Under contract, they have to weight 7 months until anything can be marketed to the general public.

No matter your views on the military...they do bring us great things!

love
nick
 
Interesting concept. Questions I have are:

What are the elongation numbers?

If it doesn't like knots, what WLL would it be given if a rigger chooses knots for rigging (i.e. Running Bowline)?

What is the cycles-to-failure at .75-1 WLL?

Neat concept. I'd like to hear more.
 
Nick;

Souinds like that rope could have a lot to offer. I second Mark C's questions--do you have any numbers on the elongation and cycles to failure?

Also:

</font><blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr />
Yale is reccomending a .75:1 working load limit. This means that with this rope, you can easily and safely shock load a piece that weighs 22,200lbs!!!

[/ QUOTE ]

The WLL is not the weight of the piece. The WLL is the highest load experienced by the rope through the course of the rigging. Dynamometer tests have shown pretty conclusively that, when a piece is snubbed off, the peak load (the highest force experienced by the rope) is at least five and, in some situations, almost as much as ten times the weight of the piece. The block and sling experience approximately double the force that is generated by the rope, so these parts of the rigging must be able to withstand forces of at least ten and perhaps as much as twenty times the weight of the piece.

Mahk
 
Pardon me, I meant SWL. You CAN shock load this stuff with an insane amount of weight, due to it's shock absorbing properties.

Oh, the elongation I don't know yet. I don't have that specific of numbers. They can't market/advertise it until decemberish. I'm sure we'll find out all the goods then!

Regarding the cycles to failure, after I read marks post, I called the rigger who is mostly responsible for developing this line. He didn't give me hard numbers. But he did say that that the testing they are doing involves shock loading it with a 4000lbs (FOUR THOUSAND POUND!!!!) weight. One piece has been going repeatedly for over a month and half with 7-10 drops per hour 24 hours a day 7 days a week. After this time it shows little to no sign of wear. To put it in perspective, Double Esterlon (their equivalent of stable-braid) at a similar strength won't even last 4 days in this same test.

Now this testing does not take in to account getting the rope wet, dirty, dragged through the tree, stepped on by the ground crew and all that other good stuff that we tree guys do to the rope, but it is still a very good sign.

This is a rope that was designed to take a shock load over and over. It seems to do just that.

love
nick
 
I talked with Jamie Goddard at the TCI in Sacramento last weekend. He's one of the assistant sales manager for Yale. At the Yale display he showed me several new ropes with polyester sheaths around three different cores of Technora, Dynema and Spectra. All of them exhibited strength specs beyond anything imaginable from my old school upbringing.

I suppose one of those ropes I seen were close to what Yale is offering to the Goverment Armed Forces.

It's scary to know that such a fine diameter line has the strength to withstand such great forces. Where in the past a eight inch line would break at a couple hundred pounds and now rip through your body like it wasn't there.

For sure it's a new world today and learning to work with such fine diameters and super strengths will lead us to a totally new school of understanding ropes and rigging.

Jerry B
 
Now that you've give us a peak, the questions are coming.

Can you give us any insight about the use that the military is going to use the rope? I don't want to comprimise security of course.

Like Jerry says, this will be a new world.

Tom
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

New threads New posts

Back
Top Bottom