Single Use Lifting Slings

ए single use lifting sling is a rated flat woven band bought for one journey and supplied with the load rather than drawn from a sling store. It is made to the pick points and the pack it will travel with, marked to the reference of the consignment it belongs to, used once, and not recovered. Nothing in the engineering is reduced by the word: the band is woven, closed and marked to the same discipline as any webbing sling in this works, because the journey it is bought for is the only one it will ever do.

Where the article is actually found is not the lifting operation but the despatch around it. Finished goods leave a works as a pack, a stillage or a bundle; they are craned onto a vehicle, into a container or onto a deck; and they are re-slung at the far end by people who have never seen the works. The sling is part of the packing specification in the same way as the banding, the edge protectors and the wrapping, and it is bought in the same arithmetic: one band per pick point, per pack.

What single use fixes, and what it leaves alone

Four things are fixed by the word and one is not, and buyers who read the word as a specification rather than a purchase decision tend to buy the wrong article.

• Where the band comes from. It travels with the pack. It is not booked out of a store, not chased back from the last job and not counted twice.
• How many inspections it gets. One, at issue, when a fault can still be replaced by a band from the same consignment.
• What happens afterwards. Nothing. It goes with the load, is written off against the job and does not return to a rack.
• How it is counted. Once, on the packing list, in the same line as the banding and the wrapping.

The same article is sold as a one way lifting sling, ए single trip sling or a disposable sling, and none of those words changes what is printed on the band. They are names for one purchase decision, and the decision is the buyer’s: the band leaves with the load and is written off at the end of the journey.

What the word does not fix is the grade. The fibre, the weave, the width, the safety factor, the working load limit and the marking are specified exactly as they are for an article that will be used for years, and the band carries the same figures printed on it. A single-trip band is not a lighter article; it is a fully rated article whose commercial life has been decided in advance. Reading the word the other way – buying a narrower band, or a lower factor, because it is only going one way – is not a saving on the sling, it is an unrated margin taken out of the lift.

There is a documentation consequence too. On a reusable sling the inspection record is the evidence of condition. On a single-trip article there is no record after the lift, so the print on the band and the packing list carry the whole traceability of the article. That is why both are treated here as part of the specification rather than as paperwork that follows it.

Where the sling sits in a finished-goods despatch

A single use sling is bought for a sequence rather than for a lift, and the sequence has four handover points. Each asks something different of the band, and a specification written for one of them is usually wrong at another – which is how a consignment arrives with bands that are the right tonnage and the wrong length.

The forms supplied under this name

Single use lifting slings are supplied in four forms. They are bought the same way and rigged differently, and which one you want is a question about the ends, and about who does the re-slinging at the destination.

Looped end or endless loop: what the ends decide

The ends are the part of a single use sling that is decided last and matters first. A formed eye is the band folded back on itself and closed with rows of stitching, so it presents a soft flat loop to whatever it meets. Three consequences are worth writing into the order.

• The fitting has to pass through the eye. An eye is only as useful as the hook, shackle or pin that goes through it, and the sizes are not interchangeable: a large hook in a small eye bears on the stitching instead of on the band, and a small pin in a large eye lets the load shift as it takes up. State the fitting, not just the tonnage.
• The eye is where a band wears out. Abrasion, cutting and stitch damage concentrate at the eye because that is where hardware bears. Where the fitting is rough, worn, or a hook with a wide throat, a sleeved or reinforced eye is the cheap answer – and it has to be asked for before the bands are cut, not after.
• An endless loop removes the question. No eye, no fitting, nothing to thread: the band passes around the load and back through itself. It is the better choice where the re-slinging will be done by whoever is available, and the worse choice where the load must hang from a specific point.

The rule used in this works is short. If the band is attached to hardware at both ends, specify eyes. If it is wrapped around the load and choked, specify an endless loop. Where a consignment needs both – attached at the top, wrapped at the bottom – that is two articles, and it is worth saying so, because one band cannot be both.

Sizing: the working load limit ladder

Band width is not a free choice. It follows from the working load limit and the safety factor, and the works publishes the ladder it actually weaves: nine tonnages on a 4 mm band and nine on a 7.5 mm band, three factor columns, and a minimum length that steps up with the width rather than with the tonnage.

Three lines of reading are worth doing before the table is used, because two of them are not obvious.

• The width protects the finish; the thickness carries the tonnage. The two blocks publish the same width ladder, तो ए 2 t band is 50, 100 या 60 mm whether it is 4 mm or 7.5 mm thick. If the reason for going to the heavy block was a delicate surface, the heavy block buys nothing: the width column had already done the work.
• The minimum length follows the width. 25 mm takes 0.5 एम, 50 और 75 mm take 1.0 एम, 100 to 150 mm take 1.5 मी और 200 mm and above take 2.0 एम, in both blocks. Wanting a wide band for a soft surface means accepting a longer minimum, which in a short pack is the line that decides the order.
• The weight column is a handling figure. In a kit of fifty bands it is the difference between one person carrying the pack and two; at the top of the ladder a hundred metres of 300 mm band is over half a tonne, and the bands travel as cargo before they lift anything.

Marking to your own reference

On an article with no second life, the print on the band is the only record of what it is. A single use band is therefore marked with the working load limit, the length it was cut to, and the reference the despatch actually uses – a pack number, an order number or your own part number – because that reference is what ties a band on a quay to a line on a packing list in an office.

• Legible after the journey, not after production. The figures have to survive a lorry, a container and a loading bay. Print that is small, low-contrast or on a face that enters the choke is print that will not be read.
• A colour as a second channel. One colour per pack type, per customer or per tonnage turns a container of identical bands into something that can be sorted at a glance, and it costs nothing on a made-to-order band.
• Language and lettering. Label text in the buyer’s language, or your own reference printed as given, is a printing instruction rather than a translation service – send the exact string to be printed.
• A marking is not a certificate. Where a project asks for a documented figure – a batch test, a declaration, a standard marking – say so on the enquiry and it is confirmed before the order. A single-trip band is not normally issued with the same document package as a reusable certified sling, and assuming otherwise is the commonest documentation mistake on this product.

Supplying them as a kit: one band per pick point, per pack

Single use lifting slings are bought in the same arithmetic as the packing, and the arithmetic is done once because nothing comes back. The count comes from the number of packs, the number of pick points on each pack, and a deliberate allowance for what happens at a loading bay.

• Count from the pack, टनभार से नहीं. Two picks per pack is two bands per pack; a four-point lift is four. A consignment of ninety packs at two picks is 180 bands, and that number belongs on the order rather than in someone’s head.
• Add the handling allowance on purpose. Two to five per cent covers the band that is cut on a sheet edge while the pack is being made up. State it, so the shortfall is a line on the order instead of a delay at the dock.
• Weigh the consignment. The bands are cargo before they are lifting gear, and a bale of 300 mm band is a two-person lift in its own right.
• Pack for the journey. Coiled and labelled, banded bales, cartons or a labelled bag per pack, with the reference on the outside matching the packing list inside.
• Make the three counts one number. The count on the order, the count in the carton and the count on the load have to agree, or the saving that justified a one-trip article is spent on a short shipment and a second freight.

Where the bands are supplied as part of the product – packed inside a crate, strapped to a stillage, taped into a bundle – the sling becomes a line on the bill of materials and is worth treating as one: a part number, a length, a colour and a printing that does not change between shipments. A band specified afresh for every shipment gets re-decided every time, and the re-decision is where the wrong length is ordered.

What changes with the load

The parameter table is the same for every single use sling. What changes with the load is which line of it matters, and the table below is the practical reading of the loads this article is normally bought for.

The inspection at issue

A single use band has one inspection in its life and it happens before the load, when a fault can still be replaced from the same consignment. Four things are looked at, in this order.

• The weave where it meets the load. Cuts, abrasion, a shiny or glazed face, or a band that has been pinched are all reasons to reject before the lift rather than during it.
• The stitching or sleeving at the ends. The eye is the loaded part of the band; loose or broken stitching at an eye is the failure that gives no warning at the load.
• The label and the marking. If the working load limit or the length cannot be read, the band cannot be matched to the pack it was cut for, and the whole point of the marking was that match.
• What it has been lying in. Grit, swarf, oil and standing water travel into the contact. A clean band is the cheapest protection on the list and the only one that costs nothing to specify.

At the receiving end: re-slinging and disposal

Half the value of a single use sling is decided at the destination, by people who did not buy it. Three things make that handover work, and all three are decided at the works.

• The band arrives with the load, not in a bag in the cab. A band that has to be found before it can be used is a band that will be replaced by whatever is on the lorry.
• The pick positions are marked on the load. A chalk mark, a stencil or a label on the pack repeats the first lift at the far end, where there is no drawing and no rigger.
• The band is disposed of, not stored. Polyester webbing is an industrial textile and goes where the local rules send industrial textiles – it does not become site lifting gear by being hung on a rack. A band that comes home to a store will be issued again, and its marking will then be stating something that is no longer true.

Where a receiver decides to keep a band and use it again, that is a decision for the competent person on that site after inspection, and it does not turn a single-trip article into an inspected, प्रमाणित, returnable one. The honest position is the one on the label: the article was made and priced for one journey.

Six lines on the enquiry

A single use sling is not a catalogue number; it is a short specification. The shortest one that works has six lines on it, and buyers who write all six receive the band they wanted the first time.

अक्सर पूछे जाने वाले प्रश्नों

Where each question goes on this site

A single use sling raises questions that belong to the article, to the pack and to the journey, and this site answers them on different pages rather than repeating them here.

• One way sling – the category this page sits under
• Disposable one way sling – the flat band and the loads it is bought for
• Single-use lifting slings, endless loop – the closed-ring form
• Webbing slings – the returnable members of the same family
• Lifting devices – hooks, shackles and the hardware at the eye
• Lifting spreader beam – when the picks hang from a beam, not the hook
• Cargo lifting net – the same consignment, netted instead of slung