Suicide Prevention Netting on the Golden Gate Bridge Video Transcript:

Loos and Company is located in the northeast corner, the quiet corner of Connecticut

We’re making the wire rope that’s used in the suicide prevention netting for the golden gate bridge

Building the Bridge Net: Making the Wire Netting

The cable being used is approximately four millimeters in diameter

It’s made of seven strands each consisting of 19 wires

Which makes them 133 individual wires in that cable

Loos and Company buys rod from steel mills directly from mills all over the world

We draw that rod down into smaller wires through a wire drawing process where the wire is pulled through a die

And the success of dies make the wire smaller and smaller as it’s drawn down to the needed sizes

In between the wire is annealed to make it softer so it can be drawn down further

Annealing is the process we use to take the wire and soften it

When it’s drawn down it gets harder and harder much like a paperclip that’s bent back and forth the more and more you bend it the more brittle it gets

When it gets to that point you heat it in a furnace up to 2000 degrees

You soften it so that it can be drawn further down to the next size

When we draw it down we have a number of inspection checks

It’s very critical if it’s not to the spec that’s needed if it’s too hard it’s going be brittle it’s gonna break

If it’s too soft it’s going to be the same thing

It’s not going to pull and it’s going to snap quicker

The finished wires are lowered into a stranding machine

The stranding machine twists the wires into individual layers or strands that comprise the cable

We test and verify many properties of the wire and the cable along the manufacturing process

Including the exact chemistry of the wire that’s used, the tensile strength of the individual wires, and of course the strength of the finished cable and its diameter and construction

Each of those wires is about ten thousandths of diameters, they’re very small

But collectively they make a cable with a breaking strength of about 2000 lbs

We’ve made a couple million feet of cable for the suicide prevention netting on the Golden Gate Bridge

This has been a multi-year project for Loos and Company

We still have another six to nine months to go before we complete this contract

It’s gratifying to know that you can point to that cable and say I had something to do with that

The cable we’re making just by being visible is helping save lives

www.goldengatebridge.net