bent BD Camalot X4

slim wrote: dude, seriously? looking at the list of routes you have done it doensn't look like you have fallen on gear a whole lot. sure seems like a lot of folks who probably don't fall on gear too often are super bold....

guideline #1?

So slim, would you use that cam?

O.L.D.S.A.G. wrote: That comment seems rude. Do admins have a free pass on rule #1?

Rob Davis wrote: guideline #1?

You two need to pull your easily offended heads out of your incredibly tight assholes...
MP is redefining butthurt one mention of guideline #1 at a time.

Well there is one thing that I can tell you for sure: if I posted what Slim posted, I would be chastised for breaking rule #1. My butt is just fine, thanks.

Don't be a jerk, especially when "Administrator" is associated with your name.

Oh and slim. just to save you some time, my route list is pretty complete and no I haven't taken many falls on gear, so I obviously have nothing whatsoever to contribute to this conversation.

A permanent deformation of the wire, meaning the material was loaded enough that it changed shape and then did not return to its original shape when the load was removed, means it has plastically deformed beyond the yield point of the steel. You may have affected one wire or you may have affected all of them. There's really no way to tell. Obviously it did not fail but you've damaged the wires and made them more susceptible to low cycle fatigue. Bending it back will only make it worse. You could say a little prayer to the gear gods every time you place that piece or it sounds like you can just ask BD. Long story short, you have done irreversible damage to the cable. I would not climb on it but I tend to be pretty conservative.

Crap! We're supposed to retire bent cams now, not just kinked ones!?!?!?

I'm gonna be broke

good lord what a bunch of whiners. which of my statements isn't true? if it was some other circumstance where your grandma's safety was at stake you would be thanking me for calling somebody out, but since i am calling you out (and you know it) you start whining about me being a jerk. i'm not gonna sugar coat it - when unqualified and unexperienced climbers start chiming in on an issue like this, i am going to be candid. get over it little snowflakes.

as for the cam - the angle of the bend is just too much given the material. different materials respond differently. for example, in one application we use for foundation anchor bolts there is a specification that allows the bolts to be bent back into place if the angle of deformation is less than 10 degrees. this material has properties that are forgiving enough to do so.

in the case of the cam, the wires in the cable aren't conducive to bending them back that far without greatly weakening or breaking the strands. if you leave it as-is and use it, the functionality will blow. i would maybe keep it as a last resort desert piece, but i already have 10 sets, so i would probably just bury it and be done with it.

mattm had the best post so far. basically, that's the price of playing this game. sometimes you place gear in a not-so-great matter and it gets jacked up. sometimes you fall on a piece and it gets jacked up.

Id like to hear what the original poster did and found out. Oddly enough i have an X4, it may even be the same size, that bent at the thumb loop. It seems that it bent just from being pulled to one side on a wandering route. Unless my second did something funny and didnt tell me.I cant say that I am worried about it and ready to retire it but if Braulio contacted BD id be great to hear what they had to say.

slim wrote: Nothing worth reading again.

I predict that in 6 months to one year, MP.com will be as dead as RC.com. As was the case with the personal attacks on RC.com, most people will get weary of reading this pointless drivel and move on.

johnnyrig wrote:Yeah slim, MtProj is sooo important I just HAVE to be sure I list all my climbing here. Whatever. Actually, considering that bailing wire would be an inferior quality of metal, maybe you (obviously having such vast resources to purchase new gear every time it gets dinged and scratched) could volunteer to bend some cam cables and pull test them to catastrophic failure. Please be sure to test an adequately large sample size to make results statistically significant. Oh, and pull a few wires out to try that bendy experiment I proposed upthread as well, since you're such a stickler for accuracy. Thanks slim.

ahhh, the old 'my tick list only has a handful of 5.6's on it but i have really done the bachar yerian, freerider, etc....'

with a hip belay no doubt...

LOL...

Mr. Wonderful wrote: I predict that in 6 months to one year, MP.com will be as dead as RC.com. As was the case with the personal attacks on RC.com, most people will get weary of reading this pointless drivel and move on.

dude, MP has been like this for 10 years or more...

Slim, no one had gone on the personal in this thread until you started commenting. I have no stake in this at all and I don't even own X4s, so I could care less. I'm just pointing out the obvious hypocrisy here - that MP clearly has a rule about etiquette yet its own administrators are not following those rules. It doesn't matter if you *think* you are right or wrong. No one is the authority on this unless you designed the cam and know what material the wire is made out of and have personally tested one until failure. People are just commenting based on their own safety tolerance and experience.

Mountain Project

Thanks again for sharing your knowledge guys - Matt Shepard my personal opinion based on my "common sense" and what I gather from some of the posts here and the review post is the same as yours: that you should not worry for the "normal" bending of the cable close to the thumb loop. Particularly, if the cable is not damaged or you don't have a "good" reason to believe it has been stressed. Black Diamond did not say anything about such case in my inquiry related to this post.

Regarding the cam in the picture of this post, Black Diamond is taking it back and send a new one. However, it is important to note:

1) the cam did its job!
2) the placement was far from optimal (I completely agree with other people that have pointed out that gear placement, rock conditions are generally speaking higher risk factors for newbies like me - whom also tend to have uncertainties about the gear itself)

I can include Black Diamond's email conversation, though not much more technical details were discussed. On the funny side (also related to one of the posts) this was my friend's cam, we were climbing together and I did this to his cam, so I bought him a new one and Black Diamond pays back, sort to say.

Maurice Chaunders wrote: I'll eat a 70 dollar bill and sh1t in your mouth

He doesn't need anymore poop in his mouth.

Braulio, Thanks for the update.

In regards to testing. I have sent some stuff back to metolius for reslining and cable repair. It just happens that my metolius cams are older than my BD cams. Metolius gave me the impression that they appreciate the opportunity to see how their gear is holding up. I cant imagine BD being different.

Inspect the cable body carefully. It is okay to tweak the cable to straighten it after a fall, but if any of the wire strands that make up the cable have been broken or severely kinked, the unit needs to be retired.


metoliusclimbing.com/how-to…

;)

slim wrote:as for the cam - the angle of the bend is just too much given the material. different materials respond differently. for example, in one application we use for foundation anchor bolts there is a specification that allows the bolts to be bent back into place if the angle of deformation is less than 10 degrees. this material has properties that are forgiving enough to do so. in the case of the cam, the wires in the cable aren't conducive to bending them back that far without greatly weakening or breaking the strands.

Seems odd that a bolt can bend up to 10 degrees but a flexible stem cam is done even though it's less than 20 degrees? Especially after seeing what bearbreeder just wrote.

This forum is too scary for me

Mr. Wonderful wrote: I predict that in 6 months to one year, MP.com will be as dead as RC.com. As was the case with the personal attacks on RC.com, most people will get weary of reading this pointless drivel and move on.

I think the bigger risk is that folks who have knowledge and experience will get discouraged from sharing it by repeatedly being drawn into fruitless arguments with folks who not only lack knowledge and experience but also lack awareness of their own limits.

As for personal attacks, it's pretty tame these days. Sometimes I miss Yarp. And where's JLP?

limpingcrab wrote: Seems odd that a bolt can bend up to 10 degrees but a flexible stem cam is done even though it's less than 20 degrees? Especially after seeing what bearbreeder just wrote. This forum is too scary for me

different materials, i have been trying to tell you this the entire time. remember, you are not a materials engineer..... we use stranded cables of all types in the industry i work in (stainless, ehs galvanized, aluminum, ACSR, hard drawn copper, bronze 80,etc), and they have different guidelines. what i am trying to point out to you is that you don't know what you don't know, and that isn't a good combination with overconfidence.