FRIDAY FORUM: Origin Stories - The Magnapulleys
Don’t you wish your double sheave pulleys could split apart? I know I did. In 2013 I was doing rope nerd stuff in my basement when I needed a single sheave pulley but all I had left in my modest home cache was a double. “It would be really great if this split apart…”
That was all it took. I began with a truly ghetto garage prototype. I couldn’t figure out the key-lock mechanism, so I started with magnets, which I figured would give me the proof of concept and I could worry about the engineering later. Once complete, however, I realized that the magnets offered great benefits, particularly allowing the pulleys a flex allowance against each other under load.
My local machine shop was next, making several stages of legitimate prototypes. And finally, the field. Bringing a piece of hardware to life is no easy feat, so I sent prototypes to several trusted industry friends with strict instructions to be honest if this was the dumbest idea they’d ever seen. That was not their feedback.
The Magnapulleys officially went on the market in 2019, and we’re proud to have them working on multiple Continents with some of the most elite Military and SAR units in the world. You never know what might come out of a basement rigging session.
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