dc42,
Sorry for the confusion, I had a typo. It's actually a texas instruments ina125p chip. I'm not sure about the grading on the chip, as far as I know there is only one bin. Though there is a ina125pa model which seems to be lower shelf.
michinyon,
As for the load in a rope, simply put the load cell in line to replace part of the rope. It can be done different ways as well, but this is probably the simplest and most straightforward. I'm just interested in the absolute force traveling through the rope itself. I'm also worried a little bit about shock vibration, but I anticipate being well within the safe loading limit of the load cell. If there's any noise or resultant vibrations I can always filter the data later.