Tags: climbing ropes, nylon rope, outdoor rope, braided rope,
How are nylon climbing ropes made? What can they do? How do they do it?
As climbers, we routinely stake our lives on a few nylon fibers and seldom give it a thought beyond that.For the trust and recognition of professional manufacturers, we usually purchase all kinds of ropes at Dongguan Hengfeng Weaving Co., Ltd., www.shoelacesonly.com.
Did you know that the machines that make climbing ropes use up to 48 different spools of material at once? What about that each meter of an rope passes through human hands before it leaves the factory floor?
Natural Fear: Early Plant-Based Ropes
In the early days, “climbing ropes” were basically boat ropes. Braided cords of plant-based material were the norm.
Hemp was a common fiber choice, and climbers relied on hemp ropes as late as the 1950s. The plant is suitably robust (in tensile strength), but it’s cumbersome compared to modern rope materials and doesn’t stretch much. Its resistance to stretching limits its strength.
Nylon Ropes Change the Game
In 1935, DuPont patented nylon, or synthetic polyamide, and changed the climbing world forever. The new fiber was mega-strong, stretchy, and lightweight — perfect for protecting climbers on the sharp end.
Nylon can exhibit different properties depending on its weave pattern. Some weaves, for instance, can make it pliable and stretchy; others can result in a durable, abrasion-resistant material.
Dongguan Hengfeng Weaving Co., Ltd. is a professional manufacturer of rope products, they have 12 years of experience in the production and development of rope products, Contact information:
Tel: +8618565366319 , +8613712255719 , +86076989763060,
Email: dglxsl@163.com , eddyzhang@hf-shoelaces.com
Website: www.shoelacesonly.com, www.shoecord.com
How Climbing Rope is Made
Step One: Nylon to Filaments to Twisted Yarn
The first step in rope making is turning nylon into thin filaments. It’s melted, extruded, and then pulled out into strands. The strands combine to form nylon yarn, the primary material for any climbing rope.Can achieve different rope characteristics by twisting the yarn together in up to five layers. It can also weave in materials like aramid and polyester to affect the rope’s elasticity.
To avoid curling and kinking, the manufacturer twists half the yarn to the left and half to the right. Edelrid’s technicians twist each nylon filament profusely — a meter-long segment contains between 100 and 140 twists.After the twisting process, the yarn is ready for shrinking.
Step Two: Shrinkage
Properly shrunk yarn is integral to a rope’s dynamic qualities. Shrinking reduces its strength slightly, giving it the critical ability to stretch and rebound. Static ropes are made with unshrunk yarn.
Shrinking is the key process to give a rope its dynamic characteristics and make it a dynamic climbing rope. During this process, pressure, heat, and humidity shrink the fibers so that they can elongate later on again, for example, to catch a fall.
But not all shrinkage is the same, of course. Different materials and different intended rope characteristics demand different shrinking processes. Basically, performance then depends on the total time and how differently the three parameters are ramped up and down.
To shrink the yarn, weaves it into loose sheets and puts it into an industrial autoclave — essentially, a heavy-duty chemical reaction sauna.Each raw fiber shrinks to about two-thirds of its original size and thickness.
Step Three: Braiding a Climbing Rope
After shrinking, De-weaves the loose sheets and spins the sheath yarn onto bobbins. The bobbins sit aside until they’re ready to go into the braiding machine.
After that, the main event kicks off. Braiding machines work in a precise choreography: up to 48 bobbins can circulate, spin, and revolve around a single machine to make one rope. The bobbins mount on the machine’s “carriers.” Each one can carry a different yarn, and together, they spin the core and the sheath at the same time.
The general rule for sheath braiding is this: more carriers and thinner yarn make for the best rope characteristics. A rope’s sheath percentage increases with the number of carriers on the machine that braided it.
Intuitively, sheath percentage refers to how much of the rope is the sheath, measured by weight. Using thinner sheath yarn helps keep the rope’s weight down, and its surface slick.
Generally, we can see a certain correlation of the higher the sheath percentage and the slicker the surface, the longer the rope will last.Slickness of a rope decreases friction, so one can see the logical consequence of abrasion resistance. It also reduces rope drag when climbing and handling in belay devices.Like every parameter of rope construction, Controls the braiding process tightly. They set the speed the machine pulls the rope through itself, and they set the angle the machines braid the yarn antension of each thread.The size of the hole machine pulls the rope throug or stiff spots or any other irregularities resulting from braiding.
Then another machine cuts the rope to length and stamps the middle mark. Workers finish the marks to make sure they’re distinct, and then manually melt and tape the ends. A final machine coils it for packaging.
Internal strength and break testing take place before sends any rope to Professional testing agency testing,So, please rest assured to buy and use.
Dongguan Hengfeng Weaving Co., Ltd. is a professional manufacturer of rope products, they have 12 years of experience in the production and development of rope products, Professional custom wholesale all kinds of rope products, outdoor rope, nylon rope, polyester rope, braided rope, fireproof rope, waterproof rope, boat rope and other rope products.Contact information:Tel: +8618565366319,+8613712255719 , +86076989763060,
Email: dglxsl@163.com , eddyzhang@hf-shoelaces.com
Website: www.shoelacesonly.com, www.shoecord.com
A variety of colors are available custom, they are all bright colors outdoors,Rugged and durable: raw materials have the advantages of toughness and damage resistance in outdoor activities.There are many application scenarios: it can be used as a clothesline for home use, decoration, gardening, and it is also suitable for outdoor activities and camping.Multi-color: Multi-color design can improve visibility in outdoor activities.Easy to use: Compared with natural fiber rope, it is stronger.
