Thick wire rope break test - video

[Frank S]

OTIS freight and personnel elevators were once the best, now with flat-belt designs instead of cable I'm not so sure, we regularly have issues with belts that have stretched, even though the car has an overload cut out, do you know if the belts are tested to the same standards as cables?

Yes belts and every other means of lifting or suspension have to meet very strict standards These standards are upgrades each time new technology comes along.
Some of the elevators of today travel at near relativistic speeds when compared to those of 30 or 40 years ago and would be considered above warp speed if compared to 100 year old technology.
One of my freight lifts had so much lifting capacity that in order for the end user to have some idea of just how much load they were actually loading into it I installed weight cells with a read out because we were constantly getting calls about the lift would not raise off of the stops to be lowered to the basement due to the preset weight limiters we had installed. One time the log showed that they had tried to lower over 40 tons at on the platform the lift was rated and had limits set at 23 metric tons the locks would not release if there was over that amount even though the platform might raise enough to allow them to release if there happened to be a little over the rated load. the elevator was cable suspended from a hydraulic cylinder.
One of my service technicians found once where someone had adjusted the relief valve setting to raise the pressure we put a stop to that by installing a pre set non adjustable relief valve