15.5.4 Terminations

For certain special applications, it may be desirable to use wire rope sling legs which do not have hand spliced or ferrule secured eye terminations. Various fittings, such as sockets and fork ends, may be used which are fitted to the rope by a compression process or by a white-metal or resin bonding process. These are outside the scope of this document and the supplier’s advice should always be sought and followed where their use is intended.

The use of gripping devices, commonly known as bulldog grips, which clamp the wire to form temporary eyes is not recommended for the manufacture of slings. The reason for this is that tests have showed that these grips did not give an acceptable or consistent level of safety.

In the case of hand splices, these should be made with five tucks against the lay of the rope. The type of splice where the tucks are made with the lay of rope, should not be used as this has a tendency to undo if the rope rotates in use and is effectively banned.

Two types of ferrule are commonly available for aluminium ferrule secured eyes, the tapered ferrule and the plain (square ended) ferrule. In the case of the tapered ferrule, the tail ends of the rope are concealed in the taper, thereby protecting the operative from protruding barbs. In the case of the plain ferrule it is necessary for the tail ends of the rope to protrude from the ferrule.