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brendodb
Trad climber
Jersey
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May 19, 2007 - 01:56pm PT
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I'm offering $12 for any and all Aliens...
Email sizes/dates, I'll pay shipping.
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Landgolier
climber
the flatness
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May 19, 2007 - 02:05pm PT
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Andrew, how did returning them to REI work out? I'd love to take all of mine back and get store credit, that would pretty much seal the deal for me. Did they take them without receipts and all of that jazz?
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bob d'antonio
Trad climber
Taos, NM
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May 19, 2007 - 02:33pm PT
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Still have not recieved any unwanted aliens yet.
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Andrew
Trad climber
Marin
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May 19, 2007 - 05:36pm PT
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Landgolier, I had thought I purchased those Aliens at REI but the cashier couldn't find them on my list of purchases associated with my member ID. She gave me store credit instead of cash back which was fine by me. I just turned around and purchased the 0, 1 and 2 C3's.
If you do return them to REI, make sure if they are within the recall date, to tell them that. The cashier will mark them defective and make sure they don't get put in the used gear sale.
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Crag Q
Trad climber
Louisville, Colorado
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May 20, 2007 - 04:05pm PT
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I'm feeling much, much, much better about my Aliens now.
Even though I had sent all mine in to CCH last summer and they were officially stamped "tensile tested", I have no confidence in them given the numerous failures taking place. Protection should inspire confidence or what good is it? I couldn't imagine being run out or climbing above a ledge with only one piece between me and disaster and having it be an alien. Cranking on them in my garage with a car jack would only add more doubt.
Now I'm debating on getting more Metolious TCUs which I've always been a big fan of because of their great trigger action and durability or trying out the C3's.
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MikeL
climber
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May 21, 2007 - 06:08pm PT
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Melissa, et. al.,
I have nothing definitive to report, because I am not getting the cams tested by the university. If anything, the below information will only make the situation more ambiguous.
The ME prof wrote me this weekend:
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Mike,
I am available Friday afternoon to test one cam, but I want to be clear about what I think about testing it.
I do not think you should use the cam again after testing it. Since the failure is occurring at a brazed joint, we might damage the joint by loading it, and we might not know that we have damaged it. Every cam will be different. Since the failure is occurring at a brazed joint, there is no way to know after testing one cam how the others will behave. I am also unable to evaluate whether the way we will be loading the cam is similar to how it is used in service. Different loading conditions will cause different mechanical behavior.
I don't want to do this if your plan is to use the cam after we test it.
XXXXXX
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I was disappointed, and I wanted a second opinion. I got one from another prof in the same department this morning. He wanted to test all my cams to failure, and he reiterated the other professor's concern (although not nearly so adamant about what my decision should be) that the cams could be weakened from testing. More important to him is that we could never know if we did damage or not.
Stumped, I asked for names of testing engineering companies, and got two from him. The first is certified, but he told me I would not be able to afford them. The second (BAE Systems), I was told, was more moderately priced and close by, so I went and talked to two supervisors in its metallography lab--but those guys and their buildings looked way beyond my league. Those guys were really nice and truly interested in the issue, but they estimated a minimal investigation would cost me $3,000 - $5,000. (I'm unwilling to make the financial contribution.) They were thinking it would be good to test to failure, x-ray the cams, bisect the cams, etc. (but we needed to talk to their lab expert in that area). I asked them what they thought about the two professors' thoughts about testing weakening bad brazes, and they thought those beliefs were very reasonable.
Well, I'm all done with this. I've made my contribution (time and contacts). I've not helped much to determine what to do. Sorry.
Any of my efforts can be reproduced by anyone who has contacts in a research university or with a recognized mechanical engineering firm that has testing equipment. (It's not like there are only a handful of those.)
As for the academics I talked to being in an ivory tower, both seem to be doing a lot of consulting (I overheard a few telephone conversations). The company appears to be a major defense contactor with lots of experience in design and materials. The two guys I talked to there said with glee they had a huge lab devoted to tearing stuff apart and figuring out what goes wrong. Neither were kids.
Both professors talked at length about the importance of third-party, certified testing for items that were safety related. These are the accrediations I heard bandied about for third-party, certified testing: I.A.S., ISO 17025, ISO 17020, AASHTO, AWS, I.C.C., DSA.
Regards,
MikeL
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Dawson
Trad climber
Oakland, CA
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May 22, 2007 - 01:42am PT
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They sound like typical academics making a fairly simple matter overly complex and waffling when it comes to translating theory into practice. The worry that testing something may damage it is fairly amusing. If this is the case, why should we test anything? Surely, testing the testing of cams is not constrained by some variant of the Uncertainty Principle.
Testing, bisecting, and x-raying the cams may be useful from the standpoint of manufacturing, but I think the people to whom you spoke are overthinking this.
I think that most of us are just looking for a simple smell test, or a sanity check. To me, I would be happy if I could send my cams somewhere where that would put them in a crack of some sort and hang 1500 pounds from them. Did you inquire about anything like that? I, like you, do not have the time nor the means to do this myself or I would.
Does anyone know a place that would do that? I wonder where MGear got it done during the first AlienGate.
My Aliens are going to be on an extended vacation unless I can send them somewhere for a pull test. I picked up a C3 to see what I think of them before I get more.
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iceravine
Ice climber
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May 22, 2007 - 08:57am PT
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That Alien looks like it was used for propecting as a hammmer..?Really a rat.Where was it found ? I mean man look at all those cables on it!Split and torn up as if it was used as a funkness tool.
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Roman
Trad climber
DC
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May 22, 2007 - 09:07am PT
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MikeL: The second professor was less adamant about you using your cams afterward because he was planning on testing them all to FAILURE. At best you will be walking away with a handful of warped lobes and blown apart cams. I don't think you would WANT to even use them after that would ya?
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MikeL
climber
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May 22, 2007 - 11:18am PT
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Dawson:
Yeah. Perhaps that's the kind of testing (a simple smell test) all cam manufacturers should use. (Sorry, I think that's how we got here.) BTW, the guys at BAE Systems were hardly academic. They seemed like fairly typical engineers to me.
When it comes to safety issues (medicine, aircraft, climbing equipment, automobiles, environmental protection, etc.), I like those that affect my life dealt with thoughtfully, carefully, and systematically.
Roman:
I was not clear. Testing to failure was what the 2nd prof wanted to do. To test only to 3/4s of the rating (my plan) brought his comment about not using the cams afterward (although less adamantly as the first prof). We talked considerably more than only what I wrote above.
Regards,
MikeL
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Forest
Trad climber
Tucson, AZ
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May 22, 2007 - 11:47am PT
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I continue to be astounded that there has not been a single public statement made by CCH other than something about waiting for a broken cam to be tested. So lame.
C'mon, man. You've got a huge number of people who *want* to believe that you're going to do the right thing and get this taken care of. Even this late in the game, after so much silence and a bunch of failures. WTF is wrong with you!?
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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May 22, 2007 - 12:04pm PT
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The soldering methodology is still the crux of the biscuit here.
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Scared Silly
Trad climber
UT
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May 22, 2007 - 12:20pm PT
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MikeL, the replies you got from the profs and the company are quite reasonable. I have done some testing on gear over the years - none in the last 15 though as I have stepped away from mechanical engineering.
Think of it this way - you are giving them a single smple that they know nothing about and having them pull test it. As was noted they were not even sure about whether the way they would test would be similar to the way the cam would be used in practice. Yeah that sounds pretty rattlely - but I can understand it. During some of our tests things happened and the sample was screwed - back to the drawing board.
I know this sucks and for folks like yourself, walter (car jack guy), and others who are concerned about your gear. Your thoughts are in the right place.
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GOclimb
Trad climber
Boston, MA
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May 22, 2007 - 12:56pm PT
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I tested all of mine to 3 or 4 kN. Didn't need any special equipment. Cost me 15 cents. I suppose if I'd wanted, I could have tested them to double that. That might have cost me 30 cents.
GO
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fear
Ice climber
hartford, ct
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May 22, 2007 - 01:27pm PT
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Hey,
Fondling my C3's here,
How does Black Diamond attach their SS cables to the fittings on the C3's? Some kind of welding I'd assume but I was curious. They all look very clean, not like they're not done by weed-smoking dudes in a garage hung over from the night before with 1000 unit order from REI that has to go out that afternoon..... Couldn't CCH use this technology to make the Aliens, in addition to modern manufacturing protocols and new management.... Looks like a very similiar fitting.
-Fear
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rockgeir
Trad climber
Tucson, AZ
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May 26, 2007 - 01:36am PT
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Does anyone know if the Souders Crack cam has been sent to a metallurgist? If it hasn't, does anyone know why?
Geir
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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May 27, 2007 - 01:56pm PT
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Hey Geir- Why wait for Godot? Aliens in your head are the worst of all while free climbing. The things ain't trustworthy to fall on until proven otherwise. Aid only gizmos IMO.
Cheers-Steve
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dirtineye
Trad climber
the south
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May 27, 2007 - 04:45pm PT
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HAHAHAHAHA, oh my.
LOLOLOLOLOLOL!
Ahem.
Cough.
OK.
I just LOVE that some people can still want a destructive test after more htan one ME prof (that's a guy with a Ph.D in making things and understanding why they work and why they fail) has said that destructive testing is NO GOOD for items you intend to keep using.
Go back ye of little faith, and read the part about X-rays. See, X-rays would show problems with the joint like the ones found in these failed aliens, without compromising the cam. (For CCH there seem to hvae been a lot of failures, and maybe some of those problems would not show on X-rays.)
BTW, NON-DESTRUCTIVE TESTING HAS BEEN AROUND FOR A LONG TIME, it's not a new thing, but I guess for you whose minds are still in the 12th century you need something you can see and feel, as opposed to the black magic of radiation.
As for metalurgists, while they do study the joining of metals, which includes soldering and braising, why do you need one in this instance, when any idiot can see that the join was not only not fully soldered, but also cold? There is very little evidence of material failure, except for right at the little lip of solder on the cable.
DO you really need to spend several thousand dollars to confirm that a barely attached bit of solder would fail?
One more bit about testing. If you take a little graduate probability from the math department (which includes the black art of statisics) you will learn that the proper way to use destructive testing is the choose at random a certain percentage of items (based on how many items are in the run and how certain yo uwnat to be that the run is good) from each production run, and break em. From that data you then can make deductions about how the rest of the batch will perform. I'm not going to dig it up, but perhaps Ed or Rgold will offer a specific example of what I'm talking about.
Or YOU can go look it up in your stat and prob text, cause there are all sorts of examples in there about this very thing. It's the basis of what they call 3 sigma testing. You can also go for more sigmas, if you want to be 99.999999999999% sure.
But what you shouldn't do is take your one set of cams, load test em, and then think they are safe to use. That's not how desetructive testing works. As the ME guy implied, you won't know if you have weakened a bad braize with your test, to the point that it may fail the NEXT time it is stressed.
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justthemaid
climber
Los Angeles
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May 27, 2007 - 04:51pm PT
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I don't have the energy to respond to Geir's metalurgical obsession in two different websites, so he can go over to the other stupid site to see my response on the matter.
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Melissa
Gym climber
berkeley, ca
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May 27, 2007 - 04:52pm PT
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justthemaid...would you post about your ballnutz over here? I bumped it over 'there' b/c I'm interested in hearing about it from a range of people (including Mal) since I'm totally ignorant on the topic, but fear that I shouldn't be. These Alien threads have been very educational for me.
Thanks.
Melissa
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