today we're down at Doncaster Cables but not to see a new cable but to see a new product to the UK
from the Runpotec range it's the Profi set thanks have been joining us what exactly is
it so it's a professional cable pulling system and essentially it's a fiberglass
rod inside of a cage and we've got these three variations from that range in front of us and
the variation has been in the thickness of those so this one here the actual
rod itself is four and a half mil thick 60 meters long and then we have the medium duty one which
is six millimeters thick and 60 meters long and then we've got the heavy duty one which is nine
millimeters thick and 120 meters long and it's about application is it's probably for smaller
conduits and trunking systems for this one here and as we get bigger we move up to this one here
however it's got that braking system that we really liked and i want to get this in nice
and early you go first with your system that has a brake on it Aaron so i can take my brake off
and i've gone through the ratchet system yeah so as i pull that it will then stop itself and i can
pull that through and it'll constantly break as it goes okay so that's going into a ducting system
so we're pushing it through so we can attach our cables or we can have one that has self-propulsion
which is my one here so if i take off my brake and you watch this this is beautiful thing to watch
and here we go and mine goes out it does the braking system as well but that'll send you out
the 60 meters that i need it's all well and good looking at the product we really need
to put it to the test so i think that means we're going to get our hands dirty over here i've got a
hatch already opened up i've looked at the plans and drawings you've got here at Doncaster Cables
i've walked it round i've got to approximately 50 meters to the other end so i think we'll take
the 6mm thick one and we're going to put it to the test however it would be really nice
to have an accurate reading of how much cable or in this case rod that we've actually inserted is
that something also that we can do yeah so on the bigger one the nine millimeter one there's
a meter counter built into the system um but on these smaller ones we have the Runpo meter
which can then be assembled and clipped onto them to give you an accurate meterage
of the room okay so we'll see how close my 50 meters asteroid is when we pull that cable in yes
so we're going to use this see how accurate your strides are this is the Runpo meter
this is the device that measures the length there's lots of different attachments for
different size cables and in the rest of the box are some other ancillary stuff like straps
this is really important in it to know the length of in this case the run because we're going to be
pulling it in because we often over stride and then add five on dummy so if i've said
50 strides is 50 meters i'm probably going to go for 55 meters of cable and with cable
prices being so expensive it's better to have that accurate reading especially if you may be
doing a design calculation and you're working out the cross-sectional area of conductors or volt
drop so we're going to set it up we're going to turn it on and as the rod passes through it it's
going to add that meter in yeah so we'll add it through we get the option to reset it which
we're doing now so it's now at zero and you're absolutely right with the expense of the cable
but another thing people are using these for is also the sustainability side of the project so
it's trying to have as little waste as possible on projects and construction sites now we've got
an attachment there to make it easy to go through there are several other attachments we've chosen
this one because of the flexibility it gives us you've zeroed your instrument again and now we're
just going to pass the rods through and into the duct so we can see how easy it comes off in order
that we can get to the other end so that's about i reckon 50 meters of pushing you've got to do there
in order that we can get to the other end but look at that there's there's no twisting no knot
and nothing that's gone with relatively ease isn't it yeah i still wish i was holding the camera yeah
but uh i had to do that job so we're at this end now we're poked out okay ah there you go
not bad but three meters out and over a big project that starts adding up now you're
showing us now that when you move the rod in and out we can change that measurement can't we
yeah so it'll measure both directions so as you're pulling the cable in if the Runpo meter bounces
about if it goes backwards it'll actually deduct the measurement if it goes forward it'll add the
measurement on so we've brought in the X board 300 in order that we can pull in an armored cable
what size of armor cable we're going to pull in so we've picked a four core 2.5 armored cable
okay yeah so decent size cable in order to pull it in and now this is where we get the luxury of
changing that attachment isn't it yeah so we're taking off the flexible head that we used for
pulling it through and we're going to replace that with this this other head okay and this one means
that we won't get that armored effectively stuck but when i'm ever attaching cables to rod system
i'm thinking of tons of tape and making sure that it doesn't pull off but you're not going
to do anything like that oh yeah no we're going to use this device where it just tightens up on
top and then the more we pull on that cable the tighter the grip comes um and the red shroud then
pulls over the end and that just stops it getting snagged on any other cables because we've got a
lot of cables in this in this trough already okay so in we go so we're gonna obviously feed it in to
start with then i think want to send you down the other end in order to pull that 50 minutes because
remember holding this camera takes a lot of effort and what i absolutely love about the X boards is
even when the cable drops off the board itself is completely rotating so it doesn't snag does it so
this is a one-person job yeah so myself at the other end now pulling this through i don't have
to worry about this end because i know when it does loop off which it does as the cable falls
down or the speed changes it'll always pick itself back up and it won't tangle and so that's the
the 47 meters of cable going in with one person doing the job there we go we've seen the loop come
underneath so that loop is now tight underneath but because of the design of the Runpotec X board
it's going to come back up and then we pull it out the other end there's our cable so we're ready to
send it on to its final destination while Aaron's washing his hands and catching his breath you
might be thinking to yourself that X board 300 was a fantastic bit of kit i'd like to know more about
that or it's big brother the 500 they're also from Runpotec if you do check out the video just there