Possible new cams... US Rock Gear



Only thing is... They don't have any real info, and the phone numbers seemed bogus when I called.

But I'm still hoping!

They are real:

http://cgi.ebay.com/U-S-Rock-Gear-GS-Gol...id=p3286.c0.m14

(Albeit a bit a of marketing launch blunder)

The web site seems like a whole lotta work for a spoof, even if the spelling needs some work. Looks like a knock off of the aliens, including the softer alloy and fatter surface area that Master Cams discarded. Could be a good thing.
Funny to see the new cams shown with an old Chouinard harness. Hard to imagine Yvon is getting back into the hardware business, but you never know.

Nice!

Smike... You need one!

Doesn't look like its an exact knockoff.... The only thing they're copying is the sheath for the trigger; the springs are outside the cam lobes and look to be a fairly standard torsion spring. Plus the head looks swaged to the cable rather than braze, which is the root of the problem with Aliens (poor control on the brazing process). I have to say, I'm tempted to get one to throw on the pull tester to see what it breaks at but have already blown through my fun money for the month (and possibly next month as well....).

Anyone curious enough to be interested in donating one in the name of science? I'll do the same sort of writeup I do for pulltesting gear over at rockclimbing.com, complete with video and datalogs of the forces..... (look over in The Lab)

-a.

EDIT- BTW, I believe the patents on both the sheath trigger and internal springs recently expired, so I'm surprised they didn't copy both.... The sheath is patent 4832289 (May 23, 1989) and the springs are patent 4923160 (May 8, 1990). My understanding is that the length of the patent should be 17 years, since that's the length that protection was allowed when the patents were filed. The length of protection was later upped to 20 years, but from what I read it wasn't retroactive.

What size ya' want?

Kathy

Hey, I'm not picky.... I just like breaking things.

Here's a link to the writeup I did for a Red Alien a while back (I needed the springs for a prototype cam I'm working on, so figured I'd break it before taking it apart), so if you're actually interested this is what it'll look like: http://www.rockclimbing.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=1888810#1888810

One side note is that it looks like they riveted the axle rather than using a nut on the end, so disassembly might not go as easily as with the Alien. I'll get it apart one way or another though....

Oh, and the crack simulator fixture can accommodate anything up through #12 Valley Giants, so size makes no difference to me.

-a.

EDIT- Just occurred to me that a people here might not know about my pulltesters since I only started lurking here recently and mostly hang out at RC.... There's 2 pull testers; one beefy and one not-so-beefy. The beefy one will do up to ~44kN with 5" of stroke and is perfect for hard goods like cams, biners and rap rings. The not-so-beefy puller has around 36" of stroke at ~27kN of force (more stroke available at a lower peak force) and is great for soft goods and knot testing. Both do quasi-static pulls using a hydraulic hand pump and utilize a Daytronic 4077 strain gage indicator attached to a 10,000 lb-force s-beam load cell sampling at 1000 samples/second. Yeah, I'm a geek.

In the name of science, safety and cheap entertainment, I placed a bid on a #1. The 10kN rating seems high for a small unit. I'll let you know if I win in 4 days or so.

Kathy

Sounds good Kathy, and good luck. Your post looks to have come through while I was editing my earlier one to add specifics about the pull tester, so scroll up a bit and check it out.

-a.

I was already familiar with the Alien test report you put on RC.com. I hang out there as well.

Kathy