2″ Wire Rope Break Test on Halo’s 3,000,000 lbs Load Test Bed

We can sit and watch things fail in spectacular fashion all day, and sometimes we do! Videos like this cable strength test are so cool to watch, especially when you try to wrap your head around the levels of stress used to run this test.

This two inch thick wire cable is clamped into a testing mechanism capable of exerting no less than three million pounds of pulling force on the item to be tested, though in this case that much pull isn’t required. Instead, the cable fails – in a brief-but-spectacular shower of sparks – with “only” 480,000 pounds pulling on it. To put that into perspective, this single 2″ thick cable can support a massive Caterpillar earth mover, or the entirety of the ubiquitous “HOLLYWOOD” sign perched high above tinsel town.

However, this machine hardly breaks a sweat to break the cable, using only 1/6th of its available output to snap it in half like the last Twizzler between two toddlers! Strangely enough, the classical music soundtrack works well too, making the video seem almost educational!