Level winder


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Posted by David Sherman on Monday, January 05, 2009 at 14:49:18 :

In Reply to: Re: Plus leave lots of room to pile up to oe side. posted by Paul ( in NY) on Monday, January 05, 2009 at 13:25:58 :

A level winder would be great, but I don't know of any way to make one small. It's either a big clunky mechanism with its own sheave that moves back and forth (sometimes geared to the drum and sometimes not) to guide the cable into the right place, or a large diameter drum with a spiral groove cut in it and pinch rollers running against it. Both take up way more space than a simple winch drum, and even so, neither of them can handle a severe off-angle pull. To make them work, they need a fairlead well ahead of them, which takes up even more space.

I think the only practical approach is to not put too much cable on the drum, so that there's room for it to pile up randomly in use, and then plan on unwinding it and re-winding it neatly, with the help of an attentive friend in the cab, when you get a chance.

I have not had occasion to use the 40,000 lb winch with the level winder that's on the back of my 5-ton wrecker. The cable alone is so heavy that it's all I can do to pull it out with the drum powered in reverse. That level winder is basically just a sheave that slides back and forth (unpowered), and a pair of air-actuated pinch sheaves ahead of it to keep the tension on it. It's a real beast, and the only think I could imagine using it for is pulling my cat out of a hole.



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