How to Test Offshore Winches

The best way to test marine air winches is to load them up using a piezoelectric strain-gauge block made for this purpose. One end of the gauge is attached to the tugger's spool of cable and the other end to something that you are not about to rip off the deck or gunnels. Run up the air to the specified psi of the tugger, slowly take-up the slack, and then stall it. Read the gauge and you got the max pull of the tugger. You can also have a service company come in and certify those tuggers for you. Hope this helps.

thank you sir...

GA, too Garth. I've read about this technique but never seen it done. Working in the Caribbean and GOM, everything is usually done Quick and Dirty. And Yes, a Load Cell is to be used in either technique. A Strain Gauge - I must have been deluded!

Testing the Tension on a cable partly depends on how accurate you need to be and the size of the winches and cables. If you were on a sail boot you would check and adjust the standing rigging with a deflection gauge that you can get any sailboat shop.

Having fun,

Mike

Typically we would normally do a load test, using a waterweight and load cell to ensure that the prescribed Safe working load is not exceeded. you may also want to do NDT on the wire rope connection, shackles, swivels.