Low Friction Rings

Low Friction Rings are simple, durable, highly polished or hard coated round thimbles that have revolutionised many rigging installations by offering an alternative solution to the normal pulley or pulley bearing block.

Low Friction Rings offer many advantages over pulleys for paragliding for example:

There are no moving parts.
They are lighter compared to a pulley block.
They are smaller than an equivalent pulley block.
Low Friction Rings have a high working load compared with pulley blocks of similar size.
They are maintenance free during their life*
They are noise free.

*Wear resistance – Independent laboratory tested Using Dymeena line. After 450,000 cycles (50,000 metres of line) over 300 hours on an abrasion test machine no visual signs of wear on the anodised coating could be found.

* The only “maintenance” that is needed is a regular inspection to check for the first sign of damage or wear. Once they show damage or wear they have reached the end of their life.

Wear will occur if the line passing through the ring becomes dirty or picks up dust, particles of stone, etc or they can become damaged through knocks (also true of pulleys) at which point they will start to abrade line. If left unchecked, damaged lines can snap which may lead to problems…

If you let your Low Friction Rings deteriorate to the extent shown above, the rings will seriously wear your brake lines very quickly. A good regular inspection will highlight the first signs of wear or damage at which point the ring (or pulley) and the control lines can replaced then to prevent any incident.

GIN GLIDERS was the first brand to start using Low Friction Rings on their production gliders and now they are used by many brands.

GIN’s Low Friction Rings are black hard anodised aluminium with a relatively large inner radius for low friction.

At first it can look like GIN’s Low Friction Rings don’t come off and some pilots have contacted us for a solution for worn rings. All the rings on GIN wings do come off and you can see some images below showing the method on a couple of examples.

Some pilots don’t like the rings or have experienced damage to their control lines (having not spotted or ignored wear on the ring that caused the damage). For these pilots, pulleys can be fitted instead of rings as shown in the images.

Here is a link to where you can purchase pulleys.

If you need any further info, please contact us via our contact page.