Static line swageless fitting install tip

Video transcript

Good day and welcome to today’s Tek Talk.

Today I’m going to be talking about the swageless fittings. As we know, the swageless fitting is one of the weakest links so to say in the system of a static line system, and it’s imperative that it’s done correctly. Let’s watch how.

Alright here you’ll see we’ve dismantled a swageless fitting, a typical swageless fitting. The four parts is the jaw housing, then we have the jaws, these three components here, and then we have the brass pressure ring and then we have the head of the whole swageless fitting.  Then of course the cable. Now it’s important that the cable has a very neat cut, that there’s no frays or burrs or cable sticking out, for the swageless fitting to work effectively.

Once we have the cable first thing we’re going to do is put on the jaw housing. We’ll slide that over the cable and then the next thing is we’ll put over the jaws and the best way is to spread them apart just slightly, put them over the cable and of course watch out for the spring that goes around the jaws. It’s imperative that they keep the jaws together effectively. When you put the jaws on the cable make sure that they are evenly spread around the the cable. You don’t want them all bunched up towards one end.

Right, at this point we going to be putting on the brass pressure ring over the cable. Now, it’s imperative that we have 5 to 8mm of stainless steel cable so that the jaws work effectively. So, at this point I’m now going to be pulling the jaw housing over the jaws just ever so slightly. You’ll notice how I’ve got the cable and the jaw housing held in my hand. Now we will take the head portion, make sure that the lock nut is well out of the way, and we’ll insert the head into the jaw housing and tighten this up by hand.

So notice how I’m holding the cable and the jaw housing and tightening up with the head only. So all I’m going to do is do it up by hand, hand tight only at this stage, and what we doing is pre-setting the cable and pre-setting the tension of the jaws on the cable. So now we must undo it and make sure that we still have the correct length of cable sticking out the end of the brass bush or the brass pressure ring.

Once you are sure that the cable is still sticking out at least 5 to 8mm we can then reassemble the swageless fitting onto the end and then tighten it up effectively with two spanners. I’m not going to do it on this one but you tighten it up fairly tight to make sure that the compression of the jaws compress into the cable and then we do up the locknut and again tighten up the locknut.

Basically that’s the most important fitting of the static line system and it’s imperative that it’s done correctly and what we also recommend is on recertification the swageless fittings must also be checked. So, you would basically reverse what we’ve just done but all you need to do is only undo the end so on recertification make sure that the cable is still in the right place and you’ll notice there will be some settlement after the first 12 months but after that everything will be settled in and ready to go.

The important thing to realise is that the static line systems must be recertified and maintained every 12 months at least by manufacturer’s recommendations. Or in some states it could be every 6 months.

The other thing to remember is for a system that has been in service for over 10 years or at the 10th year there must be a major recertification on that and the major difference is that the end terminations will have to be pull tested and generally there’s a Hydrajaws testing machine that can actually do the system in situ. We will be doing a demonstration on that next.

Thank you for watching.