camp biner/draw recall

[boadman]

Sketchy

 

http://www.consumeraffairs.com/recalls04/2011/photon-climbing-carabiners-and-quickdraws-recalled.html

Edited April 22, 2011 by boadman

[Jens]

I can't make heads or tails from the site. The recall mentions "photon" biners but then shows pictures of almost every biner they currently make.

 

Does this include the camp nano biners? (shown in the recall pictures on the link).-- almost everyone I know uses them and they are widely available in most Seattle shops. If so, this recall could impact perhaps half the posters on this site.

[wdietsch]

straight from the horses mouth ..

 

Camp Photon recall

[Jens]

That horse's mouth shows the nano biner just like the first link.

[recess]

Those are the right biners, The wire gate ones you think are the nanos are actually the photon wires, they are quite a bit bigger than the nanos.

 

[wdietsch]

it shows the Nano because it's used on the Mach Express Quickdraw ... do you need a bib?

[recess]

Oh yeah I see those on the quickdraws. As far as I know they dont specifically mention the nanos and the store I work at we didnt pull the nanos just the ones pictured in the recall notice.

[Buckaroo]

The carabiner gate may open under a heavy load, posing a risk of serious injury or death if the climber falls.

 

The Photon model carabiners are used by climbers as connectors....

 

Outdoor retail stores sold the carabiners nationwide from February 2011 through March 2011 for between $8 and $12. They were made in China.

 

 

ha ha, I guess if you are a climber you can get "connected"

 

maybe the metal supplier at the Chinese factory melted down some aluminum pots instead of providing 7075.

[Sol]

I've got some new Photon's. They were great biners...

[Friedrich]

That is a bummer. I was drooling over these at pro mountain sports and was thinking of replacing my old original hotwires with them.

 

The high KN strength rating despite the large size and light weight seemed almost too good to be true. Guess it was.

 

RIP Photon biner

 

[kurthicks]

I heard some about the mechanism of failure with these. Apparently they are breaking when the load shifts out towards the gate at around 10-12kN. The plan is to beef up the gate/notch interface and re-start production as soon as possible.

Edited April 25, 2011 by kurthicks

[CAMP USA]

Hi Everyone,

 

CAMP USA here. We sold less than 300 units of the Photon in the time between we released it to market and discovered the anomaly. The CPSC required us to list all of the units we had manufactured, but most retailers had not even gotten them onto the floors. If you do have them, please drop us an email at climbing@camp-usa.com and we will take care of it right away. It is a really strange and frustrating problem. On a very small number of units under a high load, the gate does a weird creep that then puts the biner in the open gate configuration. The reality of one actually breaking in the field is very small, but as we hold our customers' safety as our top priority we are pulling out all the stops. We are simply unable to devise a test short of breaking every unit to failure that would identify every affected unit (and every carabiner we make is already individually tested). So even if the percentage is miniscule, we have decided to pull them all back. We have already made the necessary tweaks to the mold and our Director of R&D is following the pre-production samples now. We will be testing the snot out of these, then we will move into production, test the snot of those, then re-release them. We expect them to be back in shops within 60 days. We apologize for the inconvenience and we look forward to your feedback once you have had a chance to clip them. The market feedback to date has been so strong that many of the climbers who had purchased them said they would miss them like a child in their absence!

 

As a side note - NO OTHER CAMP CARABINERS ARE AFFECTED BY THIS RECALL - The Nano23 still rules as the lightest carabiner in the world, and the Orbit Wire gates are one of the best values in climbing. The Mach Express quickdraws do include Nano23's but they are only involved because they are part of the draw.

 

Sincerely,

 

CAMP USA Inc.