Rope drive Rope drive A rope drive is a form of belt drive, used for mechanical power transmission. Rope drives use a number of circular section ropes, rather than a single flat or vee belt. The first multiple rope drive was a 9 rope drive of 200 bhp produced by Combe Barbour for their Falls Foundry, Belfast, in 1863. James Combe experimented first with circular ropes laid from leather strips, then from manila hemp. The idea of using rope drives had arisen from his earlier, 1856, experiments in using a rope drive together with an expanding vee pulley, as part of a
Fly system used for spot rigging, where they are often equipped with swivel-pivots to divert lines across a large range of angles. Tension blocks are single-sheave blocks located at the lower end of the arbor guide track, beneath the arbor. The operating line is reeved through the tension block from the bottom of the arbor through the rope lock. Tension blocks typically ride vertically along the arbor guide system tracks, instead of being fixed, to allow for variation in the length of the operating line. Counterweights are heavy objects that are used to balance the lineset loads in a fly system. In