OP cams

[mountainmatt]

Pretty scary...

 

http://www.rockclimbing.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?do=post_view_flat;post=1733591;page=1;sb=post_latest_reply;so=ASC;mh=25

 

[mec]

that's an expensive cam to break... glad the dude was all right.

[ewhack]

update

[Jake_Gano]

I know a local who had his break. I had the chance to look at it. It looked about the same as the pic.

 

He did not fall on it. I think it broke when he was placing it.

 

I believe it was the red size too.

 

 

[dmuja]

 

In summation, OP blames the cam being placed angled off its fall axis (by 30 deg???) and that it torqued on a "feature" in the pocket that put excess force on the lobes..etc..(my take only)

 

The Link cam on rc.com was only off the fall line by 30 freakin degrees! Thats nothin when your Cascade climbing - happens all the time in the mountains. I think a cam should have held in that placement from what Ive read, they're design flawed IMO - and wouldn't you know it, I have 3 of em.

 

A cam should hold in that placement (again - from just the pics and story). Maybe it should bend and need retirement afterwards, but it should hold that fall.

[selkirk]

That's an oversimplification from what I've read.

 

It was 30degrees off good alignment and prevented from rotating into an aligned position due to the bottoming placement. The lack of alignment caused the upper two lobes to pull out, and the bottom lobes got levered over a feature as the back of the lobes were still activated and a moment was getting applied to it.

 

From what I've read I'd agree the bad placement was the route cause. The breakage may have been due to longer extension of the lobes, but no-one in their right mind thinks a bottoming flaring crack where the only physically possible cam placement is not aligned for the fall is a "good" placement for any fall, much less a high factor fall. If you do think that you should probably stop leading on gear, your life expectancy isn't very high.

 

I'm sure thousand of people have put a cam in the same place. What I'd really like to know is how many have actually taken high factor falls. We all make marginal placements, they just very rarely get tested.

 

I probably would have put a cam in the same pod and have realized it was a shitty pschological pro piece only. Possibly something with as flexible a stem as a zero cam might not have levered out, but that's neither here nor there.

 

So all that said only have 1 but it's always on my rack and will stay there. And I have found good placements that NO other cam will accept with it.

Oh, and if you'd like to sell your's dmuja I'll buy e'm cheap

[dmuja]

 

'coarse, maybe Ive been free soloin all this time and just didn't know it.

 

Selkirk, I'll still use the 3 I have, (won't buy any new ones) but I won't trust them nearly as much. It just bothers me that Omega P pointed out a "30 deg" mis-alignment (Im not overlooking the bottoming out aspect also btw) can result in the thing breaking. They were kind of marketed as "desperation pieces" anyway, so that means they are going to end up in funky placements more often than other pro I'd think. And what good is a flexible stem that is not really all that flexible?

 

All you can really do here is compare this cam to others in that position and (if I could) I'd bet that some others would hold when this one exploded. If you got to be as meticulous or more careful with the placement of Link cams then they have no real advantage imo over other cams because rightly or wrongly, that was one of their selling points.

[catbirdseat]

Desperation is the route of all evil?

[selkirk]

'coarse, maybe Ive been free soloin all this time and just didn't know it.

 

Selkirk, I'll still use the 3 I have, (won't buy any new ones) but I won't trust them nearly as much. It just bothers me that Omega P pointed out a "30 deg" mis-alignment (Im not overlooking the bottoming out aspect also btw) can result in the thing breaking. They were kind of marketed as "desperation pieces" anyway, so that means they are going to end up in funky placements more often than other pro I'd think. And what good is a flexible stem that is not really all that flexible?

 

All you can really do here is compare this cam to others in that position and (if I could) I'd bet that some others would hold when this one exploded. If you got to be as meticulous or more careful with the placement of Link cams then they have no real advantage imo over other cams because rightly or wrongly, that was one of their selling points.

 

The only cams I know about with stems that are flexible enough to be reasonable in the sort of placement this has been described as are WC Zero's, Aliens, and Trango-Flex cams, of course only the Trango's would be large enough and by most reviews the stems are so flexible they're awkward in the large size. Even the much vaunted camalot's would be too stiff not to result in some serious levering.

 

I guess in my mind this was a triple failure scenario.

1. fall

2. marginal placement (bottoming and not aligned)

3. Marginal placement results in partial placement failure.

4. Partial placement failure results in bad component loading, and material failure.

I don't know anybody that designs for that level of failure.

 

As a side bar if the cam had just blown no-one would have cared, which is likely what would have happend with most cams, so it could be argued that the link-cam actually held on longer and hence absorbed more energy

 

[ivan]

OP cams suck! i've broken 2 while they were just racked on my harness!

[counterfeitfake]

I got sketched out when I first saw these things. Didn't anyone else?

[billcoe]

OP cams suck! i've broken 2 while they were just racked on my harness!

 

You F*ing around again?

 

BTW, Joseph called this the first time he saw a picture. I had reservations as well. I currently own 3. Planning on keeping them.

[ivan]

 

You F*ing around again?

 

actually, and on this rare occasion, no - the triggers have broken on me twice, from my most excellent technique of scraping my ass along the rock while climbing the likes of blown out and what-not - guess i could blame it on myself, but i expect me gear to be better than me, firsure.

[tradclimbguy]

Looking at the picture it's pretty damn simple to see why the cam broke. Torque the cam sideways and you put force on the thin portions of the lobe. OP's answer is a bad excuse for a poor design.

 

Placements aren't perfect and the cam shouldn't need a perfect placement not to break. Compare it with any other name brand on the market like BD or Metolius and tell me if they'd snap like a twig when placed a little off kilt??? I don't see my BD's lobes snapping in half.

 

 

 

[pms]

I agree, especially when you consider the numbers sold/used of the various designs.

[billcoe]

Ivan, didn't they recall - or modify the early design to accommodate better trigger wires? I think they had an early issue.

 

Do you know if your's were early models? So what was the resolution, did OP fix them? REI return?

 

Inquiring minds want to know if you have you ever fallen on one of these?

[ivan]

i've broken ones from at least 2 different designs, not by falling, just by scraping htem along the wall while squeezing up chimney-type things...it was the trigger-wires and their attachment-points both times - the second time was on blown-out at a point where i desperately WANTED a piece so since being let down that time i'm officially done w/ them

[billcoe]

Thanks Ivan: Rich Goldstone has a 100 percent awesome post on that thread which every damn one of us should read.

 

Link to full thread

He says (I added the quote which he was referencing) otherwise everything below are his words copied verbatum:

 

"Here is a picture of a Cassin Joss cam that broke in a short fall that resulted in a fatality in the Gunks.

 

 

The relevant post is here. *Link*

That post starts out thus "In early November, my best friend and climbing partner died after falling about 30 feet from the crux of Boston (5.4+ or 5.5, PG) at the Gunks. A cam placed two or three feet below the point from which he fell failed (broke). The next pro was at about 15 feet and was too low to keep him off the ground. He was wearing a helmet, but main injuries were below the helmet..... "

 

It is possible that the accident may have been the result of an overly brittle construction, but of course in order to break a cam that isn't defective a lot of force is required, regardless of the alloy in question. My guess is that this was another case of the effect of flaring placements, perhaps additionally complicated by pebbly nubbins that could have restricted the cams ability to pivot, although remember that this was a horizontal placement.

 

Cams are complicated devices whose security cannot be evaluated in the same way as a nut---consider, for example, the Metolius tests that suggested that one in twenty "well-placed" cams fail. Essentially, cams are faith-based protection, the faith in question being with the engineering principles that are supposed to be in effect. The fact that those same principles can engender arbitrarily large forces seems to be conveniently ignored---for example, no one paid the slightest attention to my post in this thread on that subject until k.l.k. resurrected it.

 

As for gear-makers responsibility to ensure that the (nearly blind) faith we would like to place in their gear is justified, it is important to remember that climbing gear cannot be engineered to withstand industrial safety margins and still be carried up the hill. The nature of the endeavor forces engineering decisions that could prove catastrophic in the field, and climbers need to understand that. I am not trying to excuse shoddy quality control, but simply say that fond as we may be of the concept of bombproof gear; it isn't, never was, and never will be.

 

Climbers' faith in cams has certainly been justified over the years by many successful performances, but on the other hand cams do fail on occasion in spite of being judged good. The fact that they don't break more often may simply be a reflection that the rock will usually give way first. It seems plausible that the link cam stayed in and broke while most other cams would have pulled out. If this is true, then what you have in all cases is a cam failure. Psychologically, people are far more likely to accept an extraction as part of the game than breakage, even if the breakage occurs, paradoxically, because of extra holding power.

 

I don't know whether any of these assertions are true in the case at hand, but they are certainly true in general: the ability of cams to hold and not break is dependent on a host of conditions, only some of which are realistically under a climber's control. Any time a cam is placed suboptimally, the chances of failure go up, and honestly, we really have no idea how much.

 

I think what is beginning to emerge from all this is a sense that cams are not at all the "no-brainer" protection they may have seemed to be at first, and perhaps a broad change of attitude is called for. People used to say that nuts required all kinds of thought and ingenuity and with cams you just fired in a unit. But cams are mechanically far more complicated and less predictable than nuts, and perhaps it is time to emphasize the respect and consideration their complexity demands.

 

In both this case and the terribly sad Gunks tragedy, the cam that broke could have been backed up, in the case of the Gunks tragedy with good nuts. When faith-based protection leads us to skip readily available options for redundancy, I think it is time to rethink the entire approach. "

[selkirk]

When I was first putting my rack together, I wondered into a local climbing shop and was asking about nuts, hexes, and cams. The guy on staff that day told me flat out that hexes were a waste of time and money, and the nuts were just a little better. What I should really do is drop the $500 for a rack of shiny new cams and call it quits. I ignored him and bought hexes and nuts.

 

Since then I've picked up a good selection of cams and have special place on my rack for the little ones, but the order I always look to place things in is nuts, hexes, then cams, and always have all three on my rack. There's just too much variability and a bit of black magic with cams. A good nut placement is a good placement. A good cam placement can change into a bad placement without too much difficulty.

 

Of course my only lead fall on gear was onto blue TCU

[OlympicMtnBoy]

I'm with Billcoe on this one. I was a little sketched when I first saw these things too, but I've since used them a few times (although I don't own one). In the case of this failure, I don't think I would have placed this sort of piece in that spot as these seem more limited in the way they will safely rotate. I think you sacrifice some flexibility in the placement for the additional range. It's possible you could place another cam in that spot and have it hold (of course second guessing on a route I've only seen but never climbed). It's also probably possible that you could place a link cam there in an ever so slightly different orientation and have it hold. There is always an element of uncertainty given the complex forces involved. As far as I am concerned, the link cam is a limited design, with inherent weaknesses, as are ALL other cam designs. It's important to understand those limitations and that they differ for each piece of gear.

 

If anyone has any post recall link cams they want to get rid of, I'd actually like to buy a couple still. Although I don't have any reason to put them on my free rack, they are awesome aid pieces and handle larger natural flares (not pin scars) really well, also good for crack jugging.

 

Ok, I don't believe I joined this discussion, I guess I'm trying not to work too much this friday. Rant away.

[Bug]

When I was first putting my rack together, I wondered into a local climbing shop and was asking about nuts, hexes, and cams. The guy on staff that day told me flat out that hexes were a waste of time and money, and the nuts were just a little better. What I should really do is drop the $500 for a rack of shiny new cams and call it quits. I ignored him and bought hexes and nuts.

 

Since then I've picked up a good selection of cams and have special place on my rack for the little ones, but the order I always look to place things in is nuts, hexes, then cams, and always have all three on my rack. There's just too much variability and a bit of black magic with cams. A good nut placement is a good placement. A good cam placement can change into a bad placement without too much difficulty.

 

Of course my only lead fall on gear was onto blue TCU

Ditto on most of it.

I still have a liberal dose of stoppers on my rack.

I have never liked hexes. I find that the points of contact I care about are better handled by stoppers, tricams, or Camming devices. A camming device to me is always mank unless it takes a fall in it's correct orientation. Even in the early forged friend days we saw articles like this with pictures of broken cam arms, cams, and triggers. It was and is not wise to assume that a rotating cam will hold. Put a long runner on it. Or understand that is a crap-shoot. That said, I have seen many types of cams hold falls under unbeleivable conditions. One time a friend of mine fell on a #2 forged friend with only two cams touching the rock and it held. Nevertheless, he didn't hang on it long.

For me it boils down to this, the fewer parts you have, the fewer parts that can fail. Give me a solid stopper any day.

[tradclimbguy]

Boy oh boy what a bunch of fair weather gear heads. Next time a nut fails we'll have 12 posts about how you all only climb with cams. Geez (Note: I am poking fun. So don't go all freak out on me)

 

As for my rack I carry no hexes and about 5 nuts in total. Depending on the climb I may take some RP's or offsets to supplement but any medium to large nuts have primarily been retired. The rest of my rack consists of all cams. Standard single rack of cams with doubles in the small usually. Next step up would be a full set of doubles to #2BD and a #3. Rarely do I take more than one #3 though unless the climb calls for it.

 

I just don't place nuts anymore and usually only on harder climbs when I need more of one size. They've truly become backup on my rack for my cams. (BD's, Metolius, Aliens and Wild Country)

 

This event only reinforces the fact that gear breaks. ALL gear, not just cams and that backing up gear is good an placing all your money into one piece can be really bad. I still believe a cam shouldn't break because it wasn't set at the right angle so I don't plan on buying any crappy OP's and from the looks of it anything Cassin either.

 

 

[billcoe]

You didn't read Rgolds post

[billcoe]

Or is you did read it - you didn't understand it

[tradclimbguy]

Pokin fun man... Geez. Read half the other "I only climb with nut based posts" in this thread