~18 min read
Encyclopedic overview
Steel wire rope (right hand lang lay)
Wire rope is composed of as few as two solid metal wires twisted into a helix that forms a composite rope, in a pattern known as laid rope. Larger diameter wire rope consists of multiple strands of such laid rope in a pattern known as cable laid. Manufactured using an industrial machine known as a strander, the wires are fed through a series of barrels and spun into their final composite orientation.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “wire rope” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.