Choosing the right lifting sling for your specific needs can be a challenge. Chain slings and synthetic webbing slings both have their place on construction sites, but if you need a lifting sling that marries safety and reliability with raw lifting strength, wire rope lifting slings are hard to beat. These lifting slings are ideal for most construction projects.

If you need new lifting slings for your cranes, container handlers, or other heavy lifting vehicles, here are five reasons to choose lifting slings made of wire rope.

1. Cost Effective

Lifting slings suitable for commercial or industrial-grade construction projects are rarely cheap, but wire rope slings can be more cost effective than most other options on the market. Wire rope slings are usually significantly cheaper than other types of lifting sling with similar performance characteristics, especially if you need a particularly long sling for specialized construction.

Purchasing your slings directly from a wire rope manufacturer will ensure you pay even less.

2. Compact and Lightweight

Compared to lifting slings made from alloy chains, wire rope slings are remarkably slender and lightweight. However, they still possess more than enough load-bearing strength to perform heavy-duty lifting and carrying tasks and are significantly stronger and tougher than polyester or nylon lifting slings.

Using wire rope instead of chain slings means you can use smaller, lighter slings to carry heavy loads. This increases the weight of the loads your sling can carry without overtaxing the crane or lifting vehicle using the sling. Less weight and bulk also makes your lifting slings easier and cheaper to transport and is particularly useful if you have limited storage area for unused or spare slings.

3. Durable

The complex, multi-stranded structure of a wire rope sling provides incredible toughness and durability, and a wire rope sling can last for many years with proper maintenance. Metal-cored varieties are particularly durable and long-lived; although fiber-core wire ropes are still highly durable if properly stored and regularly lubricated.

Wire rope slings are particularly resistant to abrasion when compared to webbing slings and other options, making wire rope slings ideal for carrying sharp sand or other highly abrasive construction materials. Metalcored wire ropes are also suitable for use with very hot or highly corrosive loads, so wire rope slings see extensive use in specialized industrial construction projects.

4. Versatile

Wire rope lifting slings are also renowned for their versatility and can successfully perform almost any heavy lifting task you can imagine. They can be arranged into most of the commonly used lifting hitches, including straight, choker, and cradle hitches, and are flexible enough to contour themselves to the shape of the load they are lifting. This makes them especially useful for lifting irregular or unbalanced loads.

A number of specialized slings made from different types of wire rope are also available, so you can choose the best type of sling for the job you need to perform.

For example, large-strand wire ropes with steel cores have excellent strength and superb resistance to abrasion, while narrow-strand ropes with fiber cores are extremely flexible and very useful for supporting fragile or finished loads (such as clay roof tiles or roof-mounted HVAC equipment).

5. Reusable

Eventually, even the toughest wire rope lifting sling will reach the end of its working life, but even then it can still be useful. Unlike most types of chain and synthetic sling, wire rope slings have several components that can be safely reused once the rope itself fails, including the hook and any attached master links.

As you can see, there are many reasons to choose wire rope lifting slings for construction projects. If you have any more questions, contact the wire rope specialists at West Equipment Company Inc.