X4's in a Perpendicular to Fall Line Placement

rocknice2 + bd folks, thanks for your work and research.

Thanks but to reiterate, I inquired specifically about a shallow bottoming perpendicular placement. That's it! They are aware of the other accident and will evaluate that in due time.
The purpose of this thread although born from another thread does not represent what transpired in that case. It just sparked an idea in my head and I followed it.

D.Buffum wrote: BD's response amounts to "trust us, we're the experts."

Well yes. It's certainly not me.

@CEN-did we test for bottoming crack, shallow placement? - yup
did we make rating? Not even close
did we test every other cam on the market including our own? You betcha
did they get results much different than ours? - not really -CEN@

I believe they did the test and trust their results over my own any day of the week.

@CEN-Did we spend an astronomical amount of time tweaking the interface between the axle swage and the trigger wire ‘distal’ to fro to avoid the flex of the cable pulling on the trigger wires on what we consider a pretty crappy placement ? Yes
dd we specifically do our best to design the trigger wires to have a strength such that if you’re reefing on the trigger, they don’t break, but in the situation described above, they just might - allowing the cam to stay in the crack Yes
Do we warn that a bottoming crack placement is a crappy placement in the instructions? yes, a shallow bottoming crack placement is a crappy placement. -CEN@

Sounds like they tested exactly what I was trying to test. They have the best method to test it and the team to do it from engineers to pro athletes.

Unless there's some other compelling evidence that come to light I will accept BD's results over my own.

D.Buffum wrote: BD's response amounts to "trust us, we're the experts."

As opposed to whom? Rocknice2 on MP.com? Don't get me wrong- I appreciate his gumption and inquisitive nature. But I can understand a BD veteran being a bit put off by some rando on the internet thinking they found a major, heretofore unknown mode of failure on what is probably the most intensively designed and tested (prior to release) piece of climbing protection currently available, made by the company who at least _re_wrote the book on SLCD's.

Mark Paulson wrote: As opposed to whom? Rocknice2 on MP.com? Don't get me wrong- I appreciate his gumption and inquisitive nature. But I can understand a BD veteran being a bit put off by some rando on the internet thinking they found a major, heretofore unknown mode of failure on what is probably the most intensively designed and tested (prior to release) piece of climbing protection currently available, made by the company who at least _re_wrote the book on SLCD's.

Sorry. Remind me again about this book and how they re-wrote it?

rocknice2 wrote: Unless there's some other compelling evidence that come to light I will accept BD's results over my own.

Probably a safe plan.

patto wrote: Sorry. Remind me again about this book and how they re-wrote it?

I can't speak for Mark but I imagine the book would be one about SLCDs and I assume BD rewriting it would be them releasing the first double axle units.

patto wrote: Sorry. Remind me again about this book and how they re-wrote it?

Being difficult to be difficult? Okay. It's a figure of speech. The "book" was written by Ray Jardine. It received a major revision when BD released a double axle unit. Every other development has been a matter of degrees (both literal and figurative).

...and I'll rewrite it again when I start making cams out of the bones of whiny arguing climbers!

Muwaaaahaaaahhaaaaaa!

Mark Paulson wrote: Being difficult to be difficult? Okay. It's a figure of speech. The "book" was written by Ray Jardine. It received a major revision when BD released a double axle unit. Every other development has been a matter of degrees (both literal and figurative).

If we're going to nit pick "book re-writes" I'd argue that BD and the double axel design was just moving the ball a bit further forward. Double axels are simply a variation on the implementation of the axel loaded SLCD.

The re-writing of camming devices has recently be more by Totem who really did CHANGE how the idea was implemented.

Honestly, the "failure" seems like an obvious implementation of a cam outside it's recommended design parameters.

Shelton Hatfield wrote: I can't speak for Mark but I imagine the book would be one about SLCDs and I assume BD rewriting it would be them releasing the first double axle units.

Double axle units, didn't rewrite the book. The simple were a slight variation on the theme. Likewise Metolius Supercams, Trango Maxcams and Omega Linkcams. All these were other innovations just as innovative as double axles. All functioned in the same basic manner as the original SLCDs.

Mark Paulson wrote: Being difficult to be difficult? Okay. It's a figure of speech. The "book" was written by Ray Jardine. It received a major revision when BD released a double axle unit. Every other development has been a matter of degrees (both literal and figurative).

I know it was a figure of speech. But I still don't see any ground breaking "rewrite". The added another chapter just like Metolius, Trango and Omega.

Like Mattm said, Totem have gone the furthest in changing the idea and providing significant innovation but even then its no rewrite.

Maybe I'm confused here, but it doesn't sound like they're saying "trust us, we're the experts" at all. The way I heard their response, they were saying that this is a known limitation of modern camming devices and while we've done our best to mitigate the problem there isn't a way around it at this time for any manufacturer. It would be nice if they would publish the results of their testing, but probably not very smart from a marketing standpoint.

D.Buffum wrote: BD's response amounts to "trust us, we're the experts."

This is why you trust the experts.

UPDATE
I decided to revisit my my home made jig. As I said earlier this was not a lab controlled test. So what I discovered was, I was at fault. When I jerked the cam/sling at 90deg my hand actually went beyond the 90* point to possibly a 120* angle. This time I tried to make sure not to go beyond 90* and the X4 cam did not self clean. I need to admit that originally I stated that I pull the cam down at 90* but in fact that was not entirely accurate. I placed it straight down and pulled horizontally. I said that I pulled down so not to make things confusing because the relevant thing is what angle the pull was made. Well as a result it was easy to bring my hand down and not control the angle of pull correctly.

I'm sorry I fucked up. Hope nobody sold their rack of X4's because of this. ;-)

I kept waiting for the "selling my x-4's cheap" thread to come up hoping I could clean up. Reading the technical end of BD's testing and methods, I tend trust their gear more than the rest due to how transparent they seem to be.

rocknice2 wrote: I'm sorry I fucked up. Hope nobody sold their rack of X4's because of this. ;-)

I think every thoughtful reader of this thread (and maybe some of the thoughtless jerks also) took your test for what it was: a moderately controlled home "experiment" that helped us have a discussion about a possible extreme situation that could result in cam failure. I think your thoughts and test were a great idea and we all benefited from your efforts. Thanks for doing it and for the update!