Industrial Rope
Machovec offers an extensive variety of synthetic and natural fiber rope products to meet individual market needs or specific application criteria. Continual research and development with new technologies and fiber advancement ensure revolutionary design to satisfy an ever increasing range of applications.
Types of Rope Construction
There are two main methods of rope construction: laid, or twisted, ropes - the traditional form of manufacture used when natural fiber ropes were in general use - and braided ropes. Braided ropes, now usually double braided with a braided cover over a braided core, have the great advantage of being far less liable to kink than a traditional laid rope.
Types of Material Used in Ropes
In the "olden days", rope was made of natural fibers, mostly Manila, but also hemp and others. They worked, but have now been superseded by manmade fibers with much better characteristics.
There are three main kinds of man made fiber: nylon, polyester, and polypropylene. Nylon is the strongest of the three, followed by polyester and then polypropylene. Nylon, in addition to being very strong, is elastic and thus most suitable for dealing with shock loads (with anchors, for example), but is unsuitable for applications where minimum stretch is necessary.
Polyester has the useful combination of being strong and a low-stretch characteristic, thus making it suitable for most purposes. Dacron® is a trademark of polyester rope.
The main advantage of polypropylene is that it floats. Therefore, it's the most useful rope to use for dinghy painters and mooring pennants where a submerged rope could offer hazards.
Recent additions to manmade fibers are Spectra® (brand name of Allied Chemicals) and Kevlar® (brand name of DuPont). Both are very light with immensely strong filaments.