posted March 21, 2000 04:36 PM            

They are truely that bad and are one of my pet peeves. I have chased down foreign made wire rope clips all over the western US. They are horrible. It is beyond me why Osha has not made this an issue other than they have many irons in the fire right now.

Traditionally, the domestic made "Crosby" clips come with torque specification and other data. The foreign clips particularly those coming from China....will develop a crack in the saddle if torqued to the same ft-lbs requirement as the crosby. I preach the non-usage of the foreign clips to my crews constantly. I often find casting defects, air pockts, existing cracks, bad threads and so on.

My other concern is that by back checking through vendors, we can find no "rating" for these clips, and I constantly see them used for cable guardrails on highrises and other work. With out a rating, the entire guardrail system becomes "non-rated".

I had an ocassion to see a concrete deadman accidently dropped in Phoenix several years ago. It was secured by a series of foreign clips to a wire rope.

Those clips popped just like a zipper and the weight could not have been more than 800 lbs.

Japan is producing a good drop forged clip that seems comparable with the Crosby, but the clips comming from China and other third world producing contries are simply cheap malleable clips. To me they are nothing more than widowmakers.

I am also hearing that a foreign made clevis may have parted on the load that was dropped at the Venetian hotel last year in which a sharp young carpenter was killed. His father was the superintendent.

If you want to see the difference,I have plenty of samples for comparison, and will be more than happy to send you a set to look at first hand. You will be amazed at the difference. I think we see them on the jobs simply because of price difference. A $3 Crosby clip can be bought for $.75 in the Chinese clip of the same dimension. I try to educate purchasing agents as to the seriousness of the difference. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it does not.

My real concern is that I have seen these foreign cable clips showing up on cranes in critical places.

Regards,