Customers asked and Factor 55 has delivered.
Following ongoing requests, the vehicle recovery company that specializes in all things winches, released a video demonstrating the strength of their Extreme Duty Soft Shackles. Here’s what they had to say:
Thanks for your patience on this. Here is the video of our soft shackle knot position test that many of you asked for. As mentioned before, we take the average breakage data from many sample tests completed. This video is typical of a single sample test. The first test is of our 10-inch soft shackle with the knot positioned in the middle of the span and the second test is with the knot positioned against the rigging, in this case the oversized test bed steel hook.
Extreme Duty Soft Shackles may be used as a safer, lightweight replacement for traditional steel bow shackles.In the first part of the video you will begin to notice the white plasma fibers being revealed. This is simply the natural UHMWPE fibers that are not coated with the outer protective red coating.
As mentioned before, for these Factor 55 Extreme Duty Soft Shackles, the ultimate breaking strengths of either knot placement was within 2.2% of each other – between 44,000 and 45,000 pounds. We did not observe an ultimate strength advantage to either knot position arrangement.
Yes, we are interested in the ultimate strength data, but we are equally as interested in the repeatability of this data, as well as the behavior and repeatability of the failure mode. In all of the test samples, the ultimate failure mode was the same – the loop around the knot failed- highly repeatable.
So there you have it, highly repeatable ultimate breaking strengths, and highly repeatable failure modes. The exact qualities you want to see in your vehicle recovery gear. Engineered, tested and made in the USA. #showmethedata.
