WIRE ROPES

As far as the man in the street is concerned, a steel rope consists of round wires, twisted together, with air between them. But that is not the case! At least not if the ropes come from Diepa.
Diepa stands for Dietz Patent, an innovative company involved in the manufacture of steel wire rope since 1920 having earlier been active in the field of hemp ropes from 1873. From early days the company began to develop ropes for special applications. In 1936 the first patent was granted and the Diepa brand was established. The first non rotating rope made its appearance in 1943 and in 1951 the first wire rope with a synthetic inner component entered the market. Other inventions followed.
Today Diepa remains – in spite of global expansion with product delivered either directly or via distributors into virtually every other country on earth – a one hundred percent family firm, now in its fifth generation, utilising its resourcefulness as a developer to ensure fast new individual solutions to customer problems. Diepa Managing Director Michael Gehring: “We can decide on Sunday what we do on Monday”. A number of the company’s production personnel work during the weekend as, at Diepa, manufacture goes on for seven days a week for 24 hours all through the year ( the only exception being between Christmas and the New Year ) and that in spite of considerable expansion during recent years and months. More concerning one such development later.
More than 400 people are employed by Diepa, most of them in the 17 production halls which cover almost 50,000m². And further employees were taken on at the beginning of this year – in spite of the much talked about recession.

Compact strands: More strength less wear

So let’s return to the ropes, for one rope can be very different to another. Ropes vary not only in their material, thickness, wire diameter and numbers, arrangement and lay of the strands, etc. but also, for example, in whether they are non rotating, compacted or non-compacted. Compacted ropes are a Diepa speciality. And here we return again to the beginning. In most of the ropes produced by Diepa there is simply no room for air between the wires – because they have been compacted. What this means is immediately apparent if you look at the cross-section of the rope. At first glance it is no longer possible to recognise the individual wires. On further investigation, you can see that the originally round outer wires have taken on a trapezoidal shape and the inner wires a hexagonal form and that they lie flat against each other. The strands in the rope have, in fact, been cold formed. This brings a whole range of advantages as Michael Gehring describes. “A compacted strand has, for the same tensile strength, a much smaller outer diameter or, to put it another way, for ropes having the same diameter, compacted strands will take considerably more load. And their rate of wear is much less.”
The wide range of rope constructions and applications is confusing not only for the man in the street but also for many experts for whom a rope is not exactly at the center of their engineering world but rather an unavoidable means to an end and not to be concerned with any longer than necessary. To help with this, the Diepa brochure provides the most important information related to steel rope in general and Diepa steel wire ropes in particular. In cases of specific need, Diepa personnel are ready with help and advice.
This technological edge and first class support are the reasons why Diepa ropes are used by the leading manufacturers of a wide range of hauling and conveying equipment including mobile cranes, tower cranes and excavators, overhead cranes, traveling cranes and container bridges, offshore cranes, electric hoists, passenger and goods lifts, storage shelving conveying systems, ski lifts, ship’s cranes and a whole range of conveyor systems. Michael Gehring again: “We are present wherever a load is lifted using a rope”. He does not put names to individual companies for fear of omission but the reader would be right to think of each and every company known for equipment in the business segments described above, starting at the very top. Standing still is not for Diepa. “We leave that to others”.
Thanks to the already referred to high quality of its products (all wire, for example, being sourced exclusively from Germany or Belgium) and the uniqueness of its rope constructions, Diepa production is hardly able to keep up with demand and this is not affected by the much feared worldwide fall in economic growth to plus (!) two point whatever percent. So, in spite of high stock levels (with approximately 5,000 tonnes of wire and 4,500 tonnes of strand in stock, almost all of which is ordered and ready for delivery), Michael Gehring has no regrets concerning his decision to order and commission a new stranding machine which significantly increases the output of some 60 stranding machines already in operation. And, yet again, the new machine, a type KVM 16 x 1400 stranding machine, has been supplied and commissioned by experts from Diepa’s regular supplier, Sket Verseilmaschinenbau GmbH. That was in Summer 2008. Sket had also supplied the majority of the machines already in use. Again the trump card was quality.

Boundry breaking investments

Like Diepa, Sket Verseilmaschinenbau regards itself as the technological leader in its market area and it is for this reason that the two companies came together as long ago as ten years before the border, which was only two kilometers away from Diepa, disappeared. For Michael Gehring, however, there was no alternative to the stranding machines from Magdeburg. “We have been working together with Sket for around 30 years. Most of our machines come from Magdeburg”.
And the investment was necessary not only for economic reasons. “With the old machines we were limited to a maximum rope diameter of 80mm. Now, with the KVM 16 x 1400 we can go up to 120mm. And we can finish in much larger coil weights: 100 instead of 25 tonnes. That means – as an aside – special transportation on a low loader, as 100 tonne coils, consisting for example of over 3 km of 76mm (3 inch) diameter rope, are not only too heavy but also too large to fit on the loading surface of normal road transport vehicles – not to mention the clearance gauges of European railway systems.” His eyes light up as we witness by chance a coil being taken off by two mobile cranes.

New markets, new opportunities – growing in times of crisis

The KVM 16 x 1400 is a gigantic cage type stranding machine. The installation is 85m long in all – not much when compared with the length of the old ropery walkways, but impressive never-the-less. But even more impressive than the sheer size of the machine is its almost silent operation as strand is paid-off its 16 tonne capacity bobbins. Size and know-how naturally have their price. The Diepa investment was more than five million Euro – by no means small beer, but a lucrative investment. And the people in Neustadt bei Coburg expect it to be very lucrative. For with stronger and longer ropes new markets can be serviced: for example the offshore industry. But let’s not simply confuse the reader with big numbers: Diepa can supply ropes from 1mm in diameter!
And so the new machine has been working, turning day and night since October without stopping, except for bobbin and program changes. It can produce all types of ropes which Diepa supply, be they in normal or Lang’s lay, rotating or non-rotating.
From Michael Gehring’s point of view commissioning went absolutely smoothly – as was to be expected. “Sket Verseilmaschinenbau has been supplying us for 30 years and we have never had any serious problems – neither before or after reunification. Some assemblies we build ourselves and Sket integrates them into the machines and this too is problem free. The occasional need to set something up or make a fine adjustment is quite normal.” In the opinion of the Diepa Managing Director, this has much to do with continuity of personnel in Magdeburg. “We have been dealing with many of our Sket colleagues from day one. These are people with incredible experience and know-how.” And he names as an example Bernd Zimmermann, the Sket regional sales manager responsible for his area.
Michael Gehring is very happy with Sket Verseilmaschinenbau. And he has no complaints either concerning the generally anticipated recession. “On the one hand our capacity is fully committed and I am sure that our customers would be happy to see a reduction in delivery lead times. On the other, with our new KVM 16 x 1400 machine, we reach new markets for larger mobile and excavating cranes, offshore technology and wind farms which should more than compensate for any possible reduction in demand from old markets.” And this being the case, the investments further planned for 2009 should soon pay for themselves: seven stranding machines – also from Sket naturally.
– hgs –

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