ABSTRACT
Overview Grooved drum cable winches are the most common machines built for moving scenery. They find use everywhere on stage: moving wagons guided in deck tracks, spinning turntables (albeit not endlessly), powering counterweighted flying effects, and, with special consideration to single failure proof design, they can be made for dead hauling loads on lifts and in the flies. The benefits they offer arise mainly out of the wire rope they pull, which is relatively inexpensive, strong for its size, easily muled nearly anywhere via sheaves, requires tools for cutting and assembly that most theatres already own, and it is commonly used and well understood by many. On the other hand, wire rope is far from perfect. It stretches and twists under load more than we would all like, and it is only usable in tension, requiring loops of rope in order to pull both onstage and then off.
