The Bendix Corporation

Frederick L Bennett

Robert M Bridges

Harold A Gray

To avoid possible damage to an associated hoist and sheaves, a cable termination is provided which has the capability of permitting a cable to be separated cleanly from a firmly anchored connector at the hoist when the cable is subjected to a limited force. To insure that resistance of the cable to being separated from the connector is limited, the individual conductors are trimmed to varying lengths before being soldered or fastened to the connector. The wires and connections are then potted with a first potting material which has limited shear strength, and this assembly then has a jacket of high strength insulating material molded to its outside covering part of the connector, the first potting material, and a portion of the cable jacket, thereby forming a good watertight seal at the connector and around the cable. When subjected to a predictable axial force, the annular seal fails and the conductor leads are each (or in small groups) subjected to the entire applied axial force in turn, thus causing the conducting wires to fail in sequence rather than permitting several wires to carry the load at once. With the successive failures of the connectors, the low strength interior potting compound crumbles and the conducting wires pull free of the connector without carrying any hard potting material or other connector parts which would cause the separated part to have a diameter significantly greater than the cable itself.

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Granada Hills, CA, United States of America

Frederick L Bennett