Working with electric power cables, don't forget your cable spiker

Whilst working on the railway side with electric power cables either for repair or maintenance special precautions must be taken at all times to ensure employee safety.   Once the cable has been made dead and then connected to earth at the point of supply, the cable is then cut, usually by a hacksaw or cable cutters.

It often happens that the cable to be cut is distant from the circuit disconnect, grouped with other cables and sometimes buried in the ground. In order to avoid any possibility of a mistake and a “live” cable being cut, a sequential rigid four step procedure must be followed which requires the disconnection of power at both circuit ends, identification of cable markers, electronic instrumentation signal checks and finally cable mechanical spiking. The final step is required to be carried out and it requires a wide iron spike to be driven, either with a hammer or an extended stick into the cable intended to be cut before allowing further work to proceed. If by any mischance a “live” cable is spiked, the resulting high magnitude short circuit current should trip out the feeder circuit breaker.

In order to enable the spiking operation to be carried out in perfect safety, a cable spiker tool needs to be used as it has the great advantage that it can be remotely controlled at the moment of firing by means of a lanyard (rope) release. The operator using the spiker can stand at a point of safety and if accidentally a “live” cable is spiked, the damage will only be local to the cable. As the speed of penetration of the spiking punch is so rapid, it has been found in practice that even if a “live” cable is spiked, usually no damage to the cable spiker results. If however, the fault current happens to be extremely high, it may be that the actual spiking punch itself may suffer, but yet be capable of tripping a normally operating breaker. An added feature of the cable spiker is that the wide punch shears the cable partially or totally, depending on the cable size, hence reducing additional cable cutting effort.

The cable spiker is suitable for use with all types and voltages of power cable including single and multiple conductor laminated, polymeric, elastomeric, unshielded, shielded, concentric neutral, interlock armoured, steel wire armoured, leaded covered etc. designs in either fixed or portable installations.

The cable spiker is a quality durable tool designed to positively electrically ground out any required power cable for definite manpower accident prevention and life saving to anybody working with live cables. this is a particular handy tool for track side maintenance