Grade 70 chains and ratchet binders are heavy duty truck tie downs, both chains and binders are made of carbon steel, compare to tie down straps, the chains and binders have higher working load limit , say we compare grade 70 size 5/16” binder chain(which has 4700lbs WLL) to WLL 3333lbs 2” ratchet tie down straps , 6600lbs 3/8” transport chains vs. 5400lbs 4” tie down straps , you will see that compare to tie down straps, binder chains are much stronger, and chain binders are even stronger than same size chains, for instance, 5/16”-3/8” binder has WLL 5400lbs which is stronger than 4700lbs WLL of 5/16” grade 70 chain . If we examine the design factor of chains and tie down straps, we will see that chains and binders have 4:1 design factor while tie down straps have design factor 3:1, that’s another reason we consider chains and binders are heavy duty tie downs .
The National Association of Chain Manufacturer recommends that the steel which can be used to make grade 70 binder chains must have less than 0.35% Carbon, 0.040% Phosphorous and 0.050% Sulfur. When the material meets NACM recommendation, the manufacturing process are under strict quality control, and the final products meet or exceed DOT requirements, you can put the chains and binders on your 18 wheeler and haul away .
These chains and binders are mostly used to haul big, heavy equipment, such as backhoe, bulldozer, these things are hard on straps, only carbon steel chains can sustain that kind of abuse , the most popular chain size for these kind of load are 3/8”, for some light equipment which is still too heavy and hard for straps 5/16” will be ideal chain size. 1/2” and up are mostly for really heavy stuff, for example, military applications, say to tie down battle tanks, you will definitely need 1/2” even 5/8” grade 70 chains to tie those bad boys down.
Grade 70 tie down chains can be used on anything but overhead lifting, you need at least grade 80 alloy chains for overhead lifting. We see people use transport chains to drag the trees, tow the docks, and to tie down the logs out of the the trees, you can go around to find more creative uses of these chains and binders.
Tags: chain binders, grade 70 chains, load binders, steel chain, tie down chains, transport chains
