Construction safety netting certification testing

Case study

Safety net strength test on site with software running on an attached touchscreen

MultiTest 5-xt performing safety net strength tensile test with recommended safety enclosure

Solution

Software-controlled tensile tester and software
Standard purpose-designed grips for rope and similar products

Benefits

Semi-automated, secure, one-button testing to industry safety standards
Flexibility to test different functionality on the same machine

Prior to purchasing the machine, test patches were taken off safety nets before their due date and kept until a batch were sent to our suppliers, which involved parcelling up and visiting the post office to send away for testing. This was time-consuming and expensive. Now we can test as and when required. We chose Mecmesin because they were the most helpful when enquiries were made.

Ian Semple, Director
IPS Safety Netting

Requirement

IPS Safety Netting supplies and installs thousands of safety nets for the construction industry. The nets are used for arresting falls and for protection from falling debris. Each net is tracked, repaired and tested for strength, against the manufacturer’s criteria for withdrawal, and industry standard BS EN 1263-1. Age, wear and tear and UV degradation all reduce the strength of nets over time. The company needs to guarantee compliance with standards for all of its nets, all of the time. Until recently, IPS had been taking test patches from nets and accumulating batches for an external supplier to test. This meant inconvenience and delay, together with all the costs of using an external supplier. Nets due for testing or uncertificated would also be unavailable for use. The company is a member of FASET (Fall Arrest Safety Equipment Training).

Solution

Mecmesin supplied a MultiTest 5-xt with bollard grips, for tensile strength testing of single net cells. Net cells are tested at a specified break speed by a custom preset program in the Mecmesin Emperor™ software (replaced by VectorPro running on OmniTest UTMs). The display shows all required calculations, including an instant pass/fail status. Performance charts and reports can be saved and printed, and nets nearer the acceptable limits monitored. There is no delay or need to batch samples to economic quantities. Nets that comply can have test certificates printed straight away, and be available for immediate use.