Elmeridge - Historical Cable
Archive
The equipment suppliers of Lynen illustrate the Company's
worldwide connections: taping machines from France, braiding machines
from England and a stranding machine from the U.S.A. (F.A. Selson Engineering).
A 25 years of cable production, Lynen products were in use worldwide.
Starting initially with four warehouses abroad, by 1911 there were already
nine. Cities such as Milan, Rotterdam, London, Libau in Latvia (then in
Russia and now in the Soviet Union), Santiago de Chile and Yokohama in
Japan are mentioned in the old records.
Rapid technical development in the following decades
required additional investments. For almost each new product new equipment
was needed. In the late twenties, when Lynen developed plans for the manufacture
of low voltage, paper-insulated lead-sheathed cables, a hydraulic lead
press was procured. Other equipment was constructed and built in Lynen's
own facilities: stranding machines with integrated paper taping heads,
armouring machines with jute serving and steel band taping heads and asphalt
impregnating tanks.
In the mid-thirties, Lynenwerk was among the first manufacturers
who introduced the use of new insulating materials. Preliminary tests
were made to insulate copper wire with plastics. The machines used for
this purpose were originally modified from rubber processing equipment
with successive changes to adapt to the specific properties of the new
materials. After World War II plastic insulation became equally as important
as rubber insulation. In the early 1950s, PVC occupied a dominating position
as an insulating material. Nonetheless, Lynenwerk concentrated on the
development of cables with improved rubber insulating and jacketing compounds,
such as chloroprene. Chloroprene-jacketed cables were particularly well
suited to meet the requirements for buried cables. These jacketing materials
combined good abrasion resistance, high flexibility, tensile strength
- in excess of 150 kg cm, elongation at break - over 300%, and cold impact
resistance to about -30 C°.
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