Expedition Geforce cable snaps...

[KDCOASTERFAN]

This cable thing is getting a little out of hand...

 

Steel cables just don't break like this. Either the park isn't inspecting them properly, or Intamin needs to reconsider their catch car system. It really is that simple.

 

poo-poo breaks. These are probably 1-2" cables at best. (Someone correct me if I'm wrong. I've not had a chance to see one on my own.)

 

I DON'T see why its so amazing. Its fatigue. The ride is 1:15 long, so assuming 1 minute to load and check the train (unrealistic, but a best case scenario) and a 10-10 operating schedule, the ride cycles 320 times a day. The cable is bent 4 times per cycle (twice going up, twice going down), so that means it is bent 1,280 times per day. And assuming a fully loaded train weighs 10,000lbs, (1000lbs for each car, plus 3000 for 28 riders) that means the cable lifts a total of 3.2 MILLION pounds every day on a best case operating scenario.

 

When you think about these things, its not very surprising. I'm more concerned for the catch car itself than anything if it actually fell down the lift and into the station.

 

Then why don't we see this happening with elevators? They have to make repeated trips hauling heavy loads sometimes 24/7 & yet we rarely hear of an elevator cable snapping in an office or apartment building somewhere.

[Solid Gold]

I love it when people pose a serious question (I.E. Why does the ride manufacturer keep having this problem on their rides ?) and people jump all over them about how they aren't engineers and hey don't know anything, completely ignoring the fact that Intamin has a terrible track record of rides that work very poorly in their first year, and sometimes the first several.

 

In light of how this keeps happening, I think Intamin has to release some sort of new regulation on how many times a ride can cycle on one cable, or what quality must be used, something to curtail the issue. It's not a fact of life that this problem should happen sometimes. Figure it out now before a snapping cable contacts a human body again.

[zjohn1988]

Because they have at least 6 cables instead of 1

[Ed]

I have a sauce that tells me this is where Intamin buy their cables from.

 

[Nosferatu]

One important thing about this incident that a lot of people seem to forget is that everything worked as it should. The anti rollback caught the train, the riders where evacuated and everyone was happy (except those that didn't get to tide). Anyway, sometime cable breaks do happen. It's very difficult to avoid it, and sometimes it can be hard to detect even in an inspection. But it's important to make system that lessen the consequenses when it do happens.

 

I also find it kind of assuming how a bunch of teenagers at a internett discussion board start telling a coaster company full of great engineers what they should do. If there is a problem on Intamins part, my guess is they are aware of it and working on a solution. If this is a problem with the parks buying 3rd party cables, then I guess Intamin is pretty pissed.

 

I also think it is kind of unfair on Intamin. A lot of people say B&M's are boring, and prefer Intamin because they keep pushing the boundaries. B&M has never had a chain break, but then again B&M seldom goes outside the box. Intamin on the other hand always pushes the envelope, and that means sometimes thing will not work as planned. It's a natural consequence of always being on the edge.

[cfc]

^Correction--Griffon (a B&M ride) once suffered a chain break and was out of commission for about two weeks.

[SharkTums]

^^Yeah, B&M has had chains break, Morgan has had chain breaks. Get over the Intamin hate and accept that stuff happens everywhere!

[JamesMC]

Everything Mechanical will eventually either:

 

A) Break down

 

B) Parts will have to be replaced

 

Nobody freaks out when the toast doesn't pop up out of the toaster, but when it happens to 24+ people all at the same time and somebody posts it on YouTube, it's big news.

 

It IS unfortunate, but yes, it Does Happen. Coasters and Toasters are no exception but Intamin does not market a toaster. Yet.

[Purplepills]

Intamin SHOULD make a toaster. It could pop your toast out higher and faster than any other toaster on the planet.

[moinab]

Then why don't we see this happening with elevators? They have to make repeated trips hauling heavy loads sometimes 24/7 & yet we rarely hear of an elevator cable snapping in an office or apartment building somewhere.

 

Are you serious? Elevators break down ALL the time. It just doesn't make the news.

[coolcalicoaster]

^^Yeah, B&M has had chains break, Morgan has had chain breaks. Get over the Intamin hate and accept that stuff happens everywhere!

 

At least no one can blame it on Six Flags or Cedar Fair

[Moose]

Then why don't we see this happening with elevators? They have to make repeated trips hauling heavy loads sometimes 24/7 & yet we rarely hear of an elevator cable snapping in an office or apartment building somewhere.

 

Are you serious? Elevators break down ALL the time. It just doesn't make the news.

 

But elevator break downs usually aren't cable breaks (at least not that I know of).

 

The steel fatigue (and thus fracture) has two components, the number of stress cycles, and the magnitude of the stress change during those cycles. For this reason, although an elevator has a large number of cycles, the amount of change during each one is relatively small (only the weight of the people. THese lift and launch cables go from being fully loaded to essentially no load during each of their cycles causes a great deal of wear and tear (fatigue) on the cables.

[peteb]

I think there are people that believe Intamin makes every part that goes into their rides. The're just like all engineering firms that outsource lots of parts and systems because you can't fabricate everything. Like making cables. I'm sure their engineers figured out what kind of cable they needed for the load requirements etc. and were even given some basic guidelines for wear and fatigue by a vendor. But you have to rememeber they're not like an automobile company that will build 100 of everything and test them to death before selling 1 to the public, they just can't. So they put in safety systems just in case failure occurs, you figure out the problems when they happen, make improvements and move on. It's the reason the coasters you ride today are better than the ones built 20 years ago. Smart people learn from problems because things are imperfect, make improvements and keep moving forward. No doubt there are good engineers at Intamin and I'm sure they don't take safety lightly. And I guarantee they put lots of enginneering time into that cable system. Remember, they're doing all the hard work. We're just along for the ride.

[Vekoma Fan Boy]

This cable thing is getting a little out of hand...

 

Steel cables just don't break like this. Either the park isn't inspecting them properly, or Intamin needs to reconsider their catch car system. It really is that simple.

 

poo-poo breaks. These are probably 1-2" cables at best. (Someone correct me if I'm wrong. I've not had a chance to see one on my own.)

 

I DON'T see why its so amazing. Its fatigue. The ride is 1:15 long, so assuming 1 minute to load and check the train (unrealistic, but a best case scenario) and a 10-10 operating schedule, the ride cycles 320 times a day. The cable is bent 4 times per cycle (twice going up, twice going down), so that means it is bent 1,280 times per day. And assuming a fully loaded train weighs 10,000lbs, (1000lbs for each car, plus 3000 for 28 riders) that means the cable lifts a total of 3.2 MILLION pounds every day on a best case operating scenario.

 

When you think about these things, its not very surprising. I'm more concerned for the catch car itself than anything if it actually fell down the lift and into the station.

 

Then why don't we see this happening with elevators? They have to make repeated trips hauling heavy loads sometimes 24/7 & yet we rarely hear of an elevator cable snapping in an office or apartment building somewhere.

 

Because elevators have an FOS (Factor of Safety) of at least 12. That being, they have 6 cables, each one capable of holding double the weight of a fully loaded elevator. (And therefore has an FOS of 2) Not to mention they also have automatic brakes that activate once the elevator reaches speeds of over about 5-8mph.

 

If there was no such thing as an anti rollback device I'm quite sure that Intamin elevator cables would also have a higher factor of safety.

[xVicesAndVirtues]

I love how people keep saying "MAYBE THEY SHOULD BE REPLACING TEH CABLES MORE OFTEN SO THEY DONT GO SNAPPY!!!111"

 

I'm sure Intamin releases a maintenance schedule for their coasters, and the parks follow it, dictating when the cables should be switched out. That doesn't mean that the cable couldn't be strained and break prematurely. Your car maintenance schedule says when to change your oil, rotate your tires, change spark plugs/wires, change timing belt, etc., but that doesn't mean one of those parts may wear prematurely and cause a repair to be needed.

 

As Robb said before, sh*t happens.

 

Intamin is the most innovative coaster company out there, and with innovation comes a little bit of trial and error. I'd rather have a few broken Intamins around than a bunch of trimmed-out B&M hypers at every single park, gently giving you -0.00000001g over the top of hills.

 

Maybe Screamscape's writer will add this to the little "Intamin decade of destruction" list.

 

I just don't understand Intamin haters. Intamin is the best f*cking coaster manufacturer out there. Deal with it.

[DBru]

^LOL, that has to be the most Intamin fanboy-ish post I've seen on here in a long time.

 

Your saying that "sh*t happens", and nothing should be done to prevent that at all? Manufacturers and parks should NOT take safety precautions because...sh*t happens? Tell that to the little boy who could have been sliced to pieces on Xcelerator a couple weeks ago. Tell that to Kaitlyn Lasitter, who got her feet cut of on an Intamin drop tower a few years ago.

 

We are beginning to hear of these cable snapping incidents multiple times PER MONTH. Some of them may have more serious results than others, but I don't understand how you all can possible believe that this is acceptable. I love Intamin just as much as the next guy...most of my Top Ten coasters are Intamins, and there is nothing in the world I would rather do than marathon their drop towers. However, when my safety is put at risk because people today take a "sh*t happens" attitude instead of a "let's fix this" attitude...well, that is just wrong. If the choice came down to riding a cookie-cutter B&M and coming off a bit disappointed, or ride an insane Intamin coaster and losing you limbs, I'd be dismayed if you chose the latter.

 

At the least, Intamin could hire a different company to produce cables for use on their rides. (The one they currently work with obviously isn't working out...)

[jarmor]

I just don't understand Intamin haters. Intamin is the best f*cking coaster manufacturer out there. Deal with it.

whoa...I just dont understand the intamin stans...

 

The cable snapped/didnt snap has nothing to do with who is the best coaster designer out there...in my opinion...

[ginzo]

At the least, Intamin could hire a different company to produce cables for use on their rides. (The one they currently work with obviously isn't working out...)

 

We don't even have enough information to say that even. We don't know if the parks are following the maintenance schedule, nor do we know if they're even using the cables that the manufacturer suggests.

[jarmor]

^ I get what you are saying but I do find it odd that the cables are snapping like they are. Yeah, I know chains snap but when they do its a little less hazard. I wonder what, if any, safety precaution can be implemented to the curent cable driven rides in case a cable snaps...

[BeemerBoy]

If I snap, I'm blaming this thread.

[xVicesAndVirtues]

^LOL, that has to be the most Intamin fanboy-ish post I've seen on here in a long time.

 

Your saying that "sh*t happens", and nothing should be done to prevent that at all? Manufacturers and parks should NOT take safety precautions because...sh*t happens? Tell that to the little boy who could have been sliced to pieces on Xcelerator a couple weeks ago. Tell that to Kaitlyn Lasitter, who got her feet cut of on an Intamin drop tower a few years ago.

 

We are beginning to hear of these cable snapping incidents multiple times PER MONTH. Some of them may have more serious results than others, but I don't understand how you all can possible believe that this is acceptable. I love Intamin just as much as the next guy...most of my Top Ten coasters are Intamins, and there is nothing in the world I would rather do than marathon their drop towers. However, when my safety is put at risk because people today take a "sh*t happens" attitude instead of a "let's fix this" attitude...well, that is just wrong. If the choice came down to riding a cookie-cutter B&M and coming off a bit disappointed, or ride an insane Intamin coaster and losing you limbs, I'd be dismayed if you chose the latter.

 

At the least, Intamin could hire a different company to produce cables for use on their rides. (The one they currently work with obviously isn't working out...)

 

LOL, that has to be the most unintelligent, over-exaggerated post I've seen on here in a long time.

 

My point was that everyone just uses every single little accident to point the finger at Intamin, the company which, as Robb stated before, probably hasn't touched the ride since it was built nearly a decade ago.

 

By the way, I don't know what calendar you use, but the Xcelerator incident happened in September. It is now October, and Expedition GeForce's cable broke THIS month. So your "omg multiple times a second" post is retardedly exaggerated. Do you need to go back to school to learn the way the calendar works?

 

Parks aren't taking a "sh*t happens" attitude, we are, in defending those who just point the finger automatically. I'm sure most parks replace the cables as prescribed by the manufacturer, and sometimes, accidents happen.

 

Oh, and in case you haven't noticed, the way the cable systems are designed for Intamin's lift hills, when cables break, the cable doesn't shard up out of it's housing and hit people.

 

The boy on Xcelerator wasn't *almost* sliced into 10000000 pieces like you're trying to exaggerate it to be. Nor were the riders on TTD a few years ago. The shards gave people minor cuts.

 

And the SFKK incident had nothing to do with Intamin. It was found that the park replaced the tower's cables with the wrong type of cables not up to par with the stress handling levels they should be.

 

I've personally seen my local park replacing cables and chains on coasters/skycoaster/rides in the off-season. Parks try everything in their power to avoid an embarrassing or life-threatening situation. They don't just say "screw it, the rusty chains are fine".

[ginzo]

Woah, it's getting hot in here.

[Wes]

[Bolliger&Mabillard]

Woah, it's getting hot in here.

So hot!

So take off all yo' clothes!

I am gettin' so hot...I wanna take my clothes off!

[rawrtotheargh]

^That was the first thing that came to mind.