Comments on aliens...

[Aric Datesman]

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.

 

Edited May 23, 2009 by Aric Datesman

[Aric Datesman]

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.

[Kimmo]

the problem here is that ok you might hit good quality with the ones you test (what will your sample size be), but will that in any way attest to the quality of untested samples?

 

there seems to be a problem with manufacturing protocols, and until that is remedied, spot testing does nothing to assure anyone about the quality of all individual pieces.

[Kimmo]

in other words, contributing cash to testing individual pieces is like throwing money down the drain.

[Aric Datesman]

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.

 

[genepires]

Hey Mister negativity, while a bunch of positives proves nothing, a bunch of negatives from this test will prove a lot. If this shop owner does have some sway with CCH, maybe the manufacture protocols will be changed. He is volunteering to do this so don't rain on his parade.

[Kimmo]

Hey Mister negativity, while a bunch of positives proves nothing

 

and herein lies the problem.

 

i certainly won't feel better about the product if 5 or 10 samples are pulled at spec rating, and my point is that nobody else should either. all i see this testing doing is possibly creating a false sense of safety (if samples pass), because potentially the cause of the problem is not being remedied.

[korup]

Given the pisspoor nature of 2 out of 3 random sample brazes, I think these pull tests *will* be pretty conclusive.

[Kimmo]

i hope you are right.

[Aric Datesman]

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.

[billcoe]

Aric, thanks for this. Add $50 from me to your running total, forgot to make a note on the paypal to adatesman@yahoo.com. Hopefully you get a nice representative sampling for this test. I suspect it's just going to make me even more mental on all of this. I've been watching your other tests destruction of shit with interest and enjoyment.

 

Thank you

 

Bill Coe

[rocky_joe]

kimmo,

I don't think, and Aric correct me if I'm wrong, that the direct objective of this small sample size testing is to make the consumer feel safe. Rather I think that Aric is trying to stage an indirect protest to the manufacturer through a retailer of considerable size. It would seem the most effective way to get CCH to change their process. I mean if they do this at a few stores who sell a lot for CCH and at every store see below rating failures I'm sure CCH will have a few angry shop owners knocking on their door demanding money for the shit they were sold. To me that sounds like the most effective way to deal with CCH, who obviously couldn't give a damn if you or I deck(die) because their gear is assembled under piss poor standards.

[letsroll]

While learning to climb I used aliens and loved them. But when buying my gear I went with C3's and find them a better product all around.

 

The weak will fail and we will not be talking about this anymore. For this market reputaion is all that matters. There rep is piss poor and it seems they don't care so they will fail. Let it happen. Get over it and buy something else.

[billcoe]

kimmo,

I don't think, and Aric correct me if I'm wrong, that the direct objective of this small sample size testing is to make the consumer feel safe. Rather I think that Aric is trying to stage an indirect protest to the manufacturer through a retailer of considerable size. It would seem the most effective way to get CCH to change their process. I mean if they do this at a few stores who sell a lot for CCH and at every store see below rating failures I'm sure CCH will have a few angry shop owners knocking on their door demanding money for the shit they were sold. To me that sounds like the most effective way to deal with CCH, who obviously couldn't give a damn if you or I deck(die) because their gear is assembled under piss poor standards.

 

IF they get some that fail prematurely, and that's IF they fail, then it may have the added unhappy consequence of making the gear shop owners liable in a court of law.

[selkirk]

So what does it take to get their the UIAA / CEN certification yanked? I imagine if that were pulled they would get dropped from all reliable retailers in the blink of an eye. Also isn't the intent of the safety label to answer questions like this?

 

It seems like retailers might be liable if they were carrying non- UIAA / CE approved hardware but for something that's supposed to meet those standards it seems like the retailer should have some protection / recourse to the manufacturer?

[JBo6]

I believe I saw something on rc.com that CEN certification was dropped. I will look for the page.

 

http://www.rockclimbing.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?do=post_view_flat;post=2143110;page=14;sb=post_latest_reply;so=ASC;mh=25;

Here is the link, page 14 the image about halfway down. No idea if this is true, or what led to this.

Edited May 26, 2009 by JBo6

[JosephH]

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.

 

Four random, used, but in basically like-new condition Aliens off climbers' racks were tested and three of the four pulled below their rating. And yes, they don't want to get publicly involved, but I did previously post those results at the time. Your tests will be public and I suspect you will also pull some below their rating - we'll see. It should be interesting, but regardless, the bottom line that's been proven to-date is that you can't trust any Alien - pre-recall, recall, or post-recall geneartion - when you place it unless you've whipped hard on it or had it tested by yourself or an independent third party and even then you have no assurance it will hold it's rated strength.

 

edit: not sure why this won't display as an image:

 

http://cascadeclimbers.com/plab/showphoto.php?photo=46110&size=big&cat=500&ppuser=6113

 

2nd Edit: these were post-recall Aliens...

 

Edited May 27, 2009 by JosephH

[murraysovereign]

IF they get some that fail prematurely, and that's IF they fail, then it may have the added unhappy consequence of making the gear shop owners liable in a court of law.

 

That's one of the reasons I no longer stock Aliens. First, it was nearly impossible to get an order filled - emails and phone calls went unacknowledged for ages, and then suddenly a 10-month old order of Aliens would show up at the beginning of the ski season so I'd have to watch them soaking up overhead all winter long before finally selling them months later. Given the relatively puny margin we made selling them, it basically translated to a small loss for me.

 

But more importantly, I became increasingly uncomfortable selling product I suspected wasn't entirely trustworthy. One or two "incidents" could be overlooked, but it was getting harder and harder to ignore more and more reports of these things not performing properly, and of CCH's largely inadequate responses. If I sold one of these things to someone who decked because it failed, and if I got called in to court to testify, I would have no choice but to concede that, yes, I had known there were potential problems with Aliens, but I had continued selling them. That could translate to a huge loss for me, and it's a risk I was no longer willing to take.

 

And I'm in Canada, which is no-where near as litigious a society as the US. I can't imagine how a US retailer can continue selling Aliens in the face of mounting doubts about their reliability.

[billcoe]

 

Four random, used, but in basically like-new condition Aliens off climbers' racks were tested and three of the four pulled below their rating. And yes, they don't want to get publicly involved, but I did previously post those results at the time. Your tests will be public and I suspect you will also pull some below their rating - we'll see. It should be interesting, but regardless, the bottom line that's been proven to-date is that you can't trust any Alien - pre-recall, recall, or post-recall generation - when you place it unless you've whipped hard on it or had it tested by yourself or an independent third party and even then you have no assurance it will hold it's rated strength.

 

edit: not sure why this won't display as an image:

 

http://cascadeclimbers.com/plab/showphoto.php?photo=46110&size=big&cat=500&ppuser=6113

 

 

Well, I got up over one yesterday at a low crux that had it failed, would have resulted in a groundfall. However, as it was behind a loose flake I wasn't too worried about ruining the piece as it should have pulled before it fell apart. LOL! Here's the table JH.

[JosephH]

Thanks Bill, not sure what was up with that...

[Aric Datesman]

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.

 

Edited May 27, 2009 by Aric Datesman

[111]

thanks for doing this aric. it really helps the issue to have some hard numbers to mull over

[korup]

Holy crap. 8 out 13 NEW and 7 out of 9 OLD. That's 3 sigma QC for sure.

[Choada_Boy]

The good gear didn't suck and the shitty gear did. Wow. What a surprise.

[tradhead]

Aric,

 

Great job on the testing that you have done. CCH obviously should be doing this kind of thing themselves, but since they're not, it is most informative.

 

In addition to reporting the average rated strength percentage of the pieces pulled (or perhaps in lieu of, your choice) I think that it would be interesting to consider the same average only not including any "bonus" for units that failed above their rated strength. If you test two cams rated at 10 kN (for round numbers) with one failing at 2kN and the other 18, on average they failed at 100% of the rated strength. Seems like an average of 60% (10+2/2) would be more appropriate in order to provide a penalty in the calculation for manufacturing process/strength variation that still yields on average a product that meets spec.

 

Just my 2 cents...