Yes, in medical devices if any part of a protocol is found to be suspect, the test is discarded

Apparently Aric's tests were faulty because the test surface was too smooth. This is from R&S staff. Nobody that I have talked to actually knows what this means for the validity of the tests although RG has attempted to explain it verbally. My second hand retelling of this did not convince me of anything.

It would be much appreciated if Rich could provide some comments for the rest of us with a lighter physics/engineering background.

In the sake of fairness, it also seems that Aric should redo his tests since he has sown much uncertainty, which may put someone's business at risk.

My open items:
1) what would happen if the tests were conducted to UIAA standards?

2) still not happy about the erratic quality of brazing, cam angles and metal softness

3) how rigorously are the other cam options tested?

4) people have been using aliens for years and I (nor some others) have not heard reports of failures that would seem consistent with the expressed concerns so the real world effectiveness seems "better".

2) "Yes more testing can and has/is being done to prove this."

The last post on Aric's thread is July 16th: "In other news, I have a dozen or so more Aliens sitting here waiting to be broken and will be getting to them once the profilometer (device that directly measures surface roughness) I ordered arrives. So look for it in the next couple weeks, maybe?"

Perhaps it jumped to a different thread after that but I searched RC and did not find anything describing new tests. He has many posts so it is possible I missed it, hence my request.

And congrats/mazeltov/cheers/etc on your new child

Aruc,

If you need profilometry, send it to me. I can do it no problem using an optical interferametric method used by the semi-conductor industry (as long as its not too thick since there is a maximum distance between my sample platten and the optics. Mine can measure upto about 2mm thick but has a resolution of about 1nm, and the largest map I can do is ~150um x ~150um unless I do a stitch function in which I can do 40cm regions but its a bitch to do.

As a result of Aric's earlier testing I replaced my blue and black Aliens with Mastercams, based on his numbers the small guys seemed 'generally' prone to failure at lower than rated strengths; now the MCs sit on the bottom of the bag because I don't trust them in Gunks horizontals.

alright folks, here's Metolius's Official Response regarding this thread. The response below was requested by myself at the OR show last week, and I would like to thank Doug and his staff for taking the time to write this response and address our users concerns. If you have any further questions for Metolius, please contact them directly, as I feel that this is the best approach for getting any questions that you may have answered. Further, this email was sent to me to post, but I will not relay any further questions to Metolius, per their request to direct questions directly to them.

Thanks again to Metolius for their time.

Metolius Climbing wrote:
It is our understanding that this forum is intended to be a venue for discussion by individual climbers. We feel it is generally inappropriate for us as a manufacturer to participate. Manufacturers, retailers, organizations (such as AAC), and guides are all great resources that can be contacted directly. When you contact us with a question about our gear, we will work with you one on one to provide answers. However, the moderator asked us to comment on this thread, so we are making an exception. To contact us directly, go to metoliusclimbing.com. You can call to talk to a live body, or send in a letter, and we will respond as soon as we can.


We would like to start by thanking everyone that contributed to this discussion. One of our main goals has always been to get climbers to look critically at all the gear they use. Every piece of gear has design limitations. Every piece of gear is subject to misuse, and every piece of gear can fail well below its rated strength. It is critical to personally analyze and inspect every piece of gear you use and understand its limitations. You cannot leave this up to someone else.

The ideal cam would have a trigger that would disappear after placement, to avoid accidental triggering of the cam lobes. While this is not possible, we feel we have used the best option for a flexible body, single stem cam.

When we first saw the images of our cam moving in the fixture during the horizontal test, we suspected there could be a problem with the test. We do horizontal pull testing as one of our standard tests, and have never seen this problem. However, we immediately attempted to duplicate the result we had seen in the video. We were unable to get the cam lobe to retract as it appeared to do in the video. Then we began looking more closely at the video, and noticed that the fixture was moving. We contacted the tester and informed them of the fixture problem. The tester agreed with us and created a new fixture that would not move. With the new solid test fixture, the tester was unable to duplicate the initial negative result. No problem, Mystery solved.

We would like to encourage the tester to keep testing, keep busting gear, and keep posting, but be a little more prudent about getting confirmation from another tester prior to releasing results. One positive thing these tests indicate is that cams don't seem to work very well in expanding cracks. We will try to duplicate this expanding crack test, something we have never been able to do before.

There is also an image of a person holding a Master Cam head in one hand and bending the stem 180 degrees in an effort to demonstrate the trigger pulling on the cam lobes. We have been unable to reproduce this effect in any placement in the field. The tester was also unable to produce this effect in the horizontal test set up. The key to performing this trick is that the cam lobes have to be fully extended so there is no slack in the trigger cords. In any viable placement, the cam lobes must be in some degree of retraction, which creates slack in the trigger cords, which makes it all but impossible for them to pull on the cam lobes. We specifically chose a Kevlar core, nylon sheath trigger cord because it does such a good job of isolating the trigger mechanism, and allowing independent movement of each cam lobe.

I mentioned earlier that we do a horizontal placement test as one of our standard tests. This is not a standard UIAA test, but we plan to present it for discussion and consideration at the next UIAA safety committee meeting.

I would also like to mention that we do an off angle test, to try to evaluate a cams performance in a bottoming crack. In this test the cam is plugged straight into a crack fixture, and blocked from rotating and aligning itself with the direction of pull. The initial test results indicate that the cams performance becomes very unpredictable when loaded like this. We will continue to refine this test in hopes of getting a more consistent result, but preliminary results indicate that this should only be a placement of last resort, and should not be expected to hold a serious fall.

Thanks to all who have participated in this discussion, and thanks to the moderator for inviting us to contribute.

Doug Phillips

President Metolius Climbing

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