Aric Datesman

JBC- Do you mean someone other than me? As I mentioned a page back, I not only contacted with CPSC but also met with one of their investigators on Tuesday to review my results and do some documentation of her own using the huge pile of broken gear from the testing. She left with a stack of papers ~1.5" thick and a rather good understanding of the problems I found and why they're significant. On a related note the UIAA was also sent copies of the results (at their request) a couple weeks ago, but I've not followed up with them to see if they're going to do anything about it. -a.

Ha! They stopped responding to my emails weeks ago...

Oh, forgot to mention it here... I don't suppose anyone here knows the guy from the Souder's Crack incident? Or anyone else injured by a non-recall Alien? I included in my documentation Bob Reuf's list on RC of post-recall failures (along with whatever details were available), but the investigator said that they would be especially interested in talking to anyone who has actually personally been hurt by one of the failures. The Souder's Crack guy is "Pinsandbones" on RC, but he hasn't logged on in a couple months and I don't know how to find him otherwise. I'm sure there have been other less-serious injuries that haven't been reported, so figure I'd ask... Oh, and since it was brought up on RC the reason I'm trying to track these down is that I want this over with ASAP (so I can get my life back) and figure it would be easier for me to find than a random person from the CSPC who has never been on any of the climbing boards. -a.

Sigh. I'd point out everything he either missed in my testing, but at this point I can't be bothered to argue this anymore with people who clearly don't understand the ramifications of what was found in my testing. Anyway, meeting went off without a hitch and it's now pretty much out of my hands. The investigator has copies of all my documentation (sent her home with a stack of papers ~1.5" thick) and will be sending her report to their Compliance Officer. That person then makes a determination whether to pursue the investigation or not, at which point CCH may or may not be contacted and an on-site inspection performed. Oh, and I sent the UIAA a copy of the documentation a couple weeks ago as well and they may or may not be looking into this as well. I know that they're rather unhappy with CCH at the moment due to improper use of the UIAA label (they're cert ran out back in December), so it wouldn't surprise me if they're looking into it as well. -a.

Another quick followup... I don't suppose anyone here happens to be the person who had any of the Alien failures I've read about over the years? If so, I'd be very interested in getting your contact info (or even just an account of the failure and some photos) as I have a meeting with an investigator from the Consumer Product Safety Commission later this week. She seems quite interested in my test results but I think a first hand account or two of failures in the field would be even better. Thanks! -aric.

Quick followup... The UIAA report went out this morning and I sent a copy of it to CCH. The response from CCH was much longer this time: "thank you very much". I guess time will tell if they actually read or do anything about it. On a side note I took a quick look at the Consumer Product Safety Commission's website this morning and it turns out they have a quick and easy online form for reporting things, so went ahead and passed them the info as well. Maybe that will light bit of a fire under CCH's tuckus and get them to clean up their act...

I'm 95% sure that they're making the lobes on a lathe with live tooling on the turret (former CCH employee confirmed this suspicion), which allows them to drill the holes, cut the slot and cut the lobe off the extrusion in a single operation and get a finished lobe without any manual intervention. What this means is that there is no jig or drill press, so unless you're doing proper first/last plus random inspection it's easy to miss bad runs going through production. I'm not sure whether its a programming or fixturing problem at the moment as I don't have a large enough sample to tell if its just the axle hole that moves or both the axle and trigger wire holes, but its definitely happening somewhere in the process. EDIT- BTW, the CCH website states that they're using extrusions for the lobes, so they're not cutting the profile.

I haven't yet sent CCH the full writeup with analysis and pics (will go out tonight along with the report the UIAA asked for), but they got all of the data 2 or 3 weeks ago and their only response was "thanks". -a.

In case anyone was waiting on the Alien results, they're finally posted. Sorry for the delay, and an easier to read PDF version should be available tonight or tomorrow (its ~70 pages long, so kinda hard to read in a forum thread format). Oh, and don't try to read it on your iPhone... there's lots of pics and its very bandwidth intensive. Link

Hey Tradhead, The full results (including pics, force charts, cross sections, etc) will be posted in a couple days for everyone to do whatever they like with... This was just a quick summary for the people who were chomping at the bit for an executive summary of the testing. Reading over your post again I follow now.... Capping the percentages at 100% we get an average of 91.9% rating for the new ones, 81.3% for the old ones and 87.6% overall. -a.

Snipping this from my post on RC since its late and I don't want to retype it... It'll be a couple days until I get this all written up, as rather than testing the 5-8 cams I had hoped we'd be able to get we did 13 new Aliens, 9 used Aliens and one each BD pre-C4 and Metolius TCU. Took ~5 hours to go through it all and I'm trying not to think how long it's going to take to edit all the pics, tidy up the data logs and run all the pre-test pics through that spiral center software (got pics of a bunch of other brands they had as well for comparison). In the meantime here's a bit more info: Of the 13 new Aliens (including 2 offsets, dates ranging from 408 to 509), only 5 failed above their rated strength. The percentage of the rating held ranged from 63.3% to 116.7%, with an overall average of 94.3%. Of the 9 used Aliens (dates ranging from early/mid 1990's to 1204), only 2 failed above their rated strength. The percentage of the rating held ranged from 54.7% to 105.0%, with an overall average of 81.9%. Its been a long day, so I'm turning in. I'll work on the documentation some over the next day or two, but since I'm probably going to cross section most if not all of the heads it may even be sometime next week before I get it done. Thanks again to everyone who chipped in for this, and a special thanks to Rich @ Rock&Snow for helping us out by discounting the samples considerably. -a.

Not to spread rumors, but word I have from someone who did some testing but can't publish his findings was "most failed below their rating". While I hope I don't find any bad ones I won't be at all surprised if/when it happens. -a.

You're absolutely correct Kimmo, this testing does absolutely nothing in regards to assuring the strength of untested samples. What we're looking to see is whether a faulty piece can be found in a small sample of what's currently sitting on the shelf of a gear shop. If one of them goes well below spec or turns out to have an undetectable defect in the braze when cross sectioned (personally I believe one of these will happen) then all new pieces are suspect and should be individually proof tested. The plan is to test at least 5, but if people contribute enough money for more than that I'll test more.

Hey guys, In case you're interested in chipping in, the folks over on RC are clamoring for testing of new Aliens and I'll be heading to NY on Tuesday to get some. I'll be taking the puller along so the owner of the gear shop can witness the testing since he'll likely have more sway with CCH than I do and because he kinda has an interest in seeing them _not_ fail under spec. The plan is to buy however many samples we can get for the money raised, minus my gas and tolls (~3.5 hours each way, car gets ~30mpg). The gear shop has agreed to let us have the samples pretty much at his cost plus shipping, so even a couple bucks will help. There's a tally of who's contributing what over on RC here: http://www.rockclimbing.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=2145520#2145520 If you'd like to use Paypal my address there is adatesman@yahoo.com. Otherwise my snail mail address is 47 Prospect Ave, Norristown PA 19403. Make sure to make a note of which site you're from and your username as its been a bit confusing for me to try and sort out who's who. Also drop me an email or a note in any of the threads with the amount you'll contribute so I can add it to the running total (I'll be fronting the money for this to allow time for checks to arrive). BTW, the plan is to cherry pick his stock for the ones that look most likely to have problems (overheating of the cable, porosity in the braze, etc.). I'm not interested in establishing failure rates, only whether faulty gear can be found sitting on the shelf ("faulty" = breaking under spec). All of the gear tested will get the works regardless of outcome, with pics before the test, pics in the fixture, pics after the test, datalogs of the forces and cross sectioning of the head after testing. The main writeup will be over on RC since I'm the lead mod in The Lab over there and have some control over things, but feel free to snag the pics/crosslink/whatever. -aric.

Just in case anyone missed the original post on RC, the head on top is from the Purple with the failed axle (~10.5kN), the middle is the Red with the braze problem (~4.5kN) and the bottom is from a Red I broke a while back that had the stem break at the bottom of the head (11.3kN). Both of the "good" brazes have some porosity issues, but ended up being stronger than the axle (in the Purple) or the embrittled stem (in the Red). -Aric. EDIT- Including the pic again because it put this post on a new page for me.

would aliens be still called POS's if they had a 5kn rating stamped on them insted of the 12kn? i don't intend that as an attack or argument - just a question. while i agree that the cams should be as strong as they advertise ... aliens are useful tools in climbing IMHO. they will stick (and stay) where many other cams would pop right out. so in those situations, the aliens are MUCH more safe than some alternatives. And a reasonable question at that. Had that red been rated at what it broke at (~4.5kN or so) I wouldn't have termed it a failure and none of this would have happened. The braze would have scared the hell out of me had I bothered to cut it open, but I can't say if I would have bothered or not since it met spec.

Word I have from one of their big customers (read: gear shop), who called CCH after talking with me is that they don't do the weep hole because it weakens the head when placed in a horizontal. Don't know how they tried it but it seems to me that running the cable hole straight through to the axle hole wouldn't have this problem. Sure, you might have to ream the axle hole again but you're ensured a good joint. @Korup- If I knew for certain it was Nadia I'd be all over that. The evidence is damning, but until this settles out a bit I'm not sticking my neck out any further. Its ugly enough as it is.

Sorry guys, I screwed up. There was a miscommunication regarding the IP information I got which lead to me accusing RC user "Sogdiana" as being Nadia@CCH. I've posted retractions and am going around cleaning this up wherever I can. For the record the accusations about me being a paid flunky came from "Sogdiana", who claims to have no affiliation with CCH. Her IP info on RC resolves to a proxy server on the same provider as Nadia@CCH, but because of the proxy I don't have his/her actual IP address. Sogdiana's writing style and odd choice of words is strikingly similar to Nadia's (Sogdiana said English is not her native language and Nadia sounded Russian to me when I spoke with her), but I do not have absolute proof that they are one in the same. -aric. BTW, Sogdiana has been unbanned.

Hey Hafilax, For the benefit of those who don't want to deal with RC, those heads are, from top to bottom: 1. The Purple, failed at ~10.5kN by way of axle deformation 2. The Red, failed ~4.5kN by way of the stem pulling from the head 3. The Red I pulled a while back, failed @ 11.3kN by way of the stem snapping at the base of the head. FWIW the braze on the 4.5kN Red wasn't as clearly underfilled until I spent a couple minutes with it and a brass brush this morning. When I first got the cam it looked ok aside from the broken trigger wire, tweaked head and 3 severed cable strands. There was so much grot that the fillet looked full. Frankly I was surprised how it cleaned up. -aric.

Hey Guys, I'm the one who did the testing and don't normally follow CC, but figured I'd check to make sure there's no bad info going around. My only issue is that my testing shows that there are faulty pieces out in the wild and I would strongly recommend that anyone who uses Aliens have them proof tested to whatever load they're comfortable climbing above. I couldn't care less whether CCH stays in business or not and personally don't use their gear due to concerns over their process control (spent over a decade in manufacturing and what I've seen disturbs me). Climb safe people. -aric.