Gri Gri wear

I discovered yesterday that my Gri Gri 2 has grooves in the faceplate that are getting sharp. I've had the thing for less than a year and a half. Yes I use a rope tarp. Has anyone ever sanded down their faceplate successfully and felt safe about it? Or am I gunna die? -Ellis 

Pics?

I have used a dremel and sanding head to smooth out the edges on the "back" part of the face plate (the area that wears from the leader's strand--left side in your picture.) I'd have no qualms about taking a little edge off anywhere else. 

When I lower someone, or rappel, I keep the rope pulled straight over the stainless-steel bump. I don’t bend the rope over the aluminum face plate. Bending it over the face plate also puts twists into the rope. 

The Grigri 2 gets internal wear on that alum plate quick if you use a larger rope. Like almost immediately. Alum vs steel. Mine looks about like yours and I feel it's fine for 100 more catches or 200 miles. Whatever comes first. I've dropped the size of the rope down a tad and the wear stopped.

I've been using my grigri for a couple years now with mostly 9.1-9.8 ropes, and I have the barest groove in the aluminum there. Seems like skinnier ropes don't rub as bad?

I noticed that modulating lowering with the brake hand instead of cam really wears that lip. 

Ive heard of people filing down the part you are talking about and have had no problems. I can't say that I have first hand experience, but I think that it would be fine to file it down.

Yes, file it down so there arent sharp edges which can be done for all your hardware that has a sharp edge that can potentially cut your soft goods.

It's difficult to say when the metal is too thin to use anymore, but others have said in the case of biners grooved to 50% of their normal diameter are still very strong to near specs of their original ratings. As far as this, the autolocking portion of the device looks unaffected. Maybe you can take calipers to it and retire it when the plate gets thinner than a piece of sheet metal.  

I'll post pics of my repair job. And, start lowering straight on without using the plate. What's funny is this wear in the plate all happened while using a 9.4 rope for the past year! Not a beefy fella. Thanks for chiming in all. 

It can also come from particularly sandy areas, or dirty ropes. Climbing in the northeast and my second hand grigri doesn't have near that much wear, even though if I had to guess, it has 400+ pitches on it. 

Yeah I'd definitely have to agree that wear and tear on aluminium gear seems not to be not from the rope but from the sand and dirt that gets into the rope/around the environment

If, when lowering, you hold the brake strand of the rope directly over the end of the GRIGRI (which is steel and plastic) such that the rope is running in the same plane as the rest of the device, and you don't loop the brake strand over the curved flange, you will see almost zero wear and your GRIGRI will last a lifetime. It does take some coordination and attention to get used to doing this however.

I'm wondering if Petzl wouldn't replace the faceplate on it for super cheap.  That would beat buying another $100 GriGri.

It does seem like excessive wear... here’s my gri-gri that I’ve had for 5 years...

It is possible that you belay way more than I do (and I also have an old grigri1 that I use on thick/stiff gym ropes), but notice that the direction of the wear on the top of my gri-gri is very different than yours. As others have said, the way you run your rope while lowering has a huge effect.

My gri-gri  has a deep-ish groove in the inside of the plate, but not on top, like yours.

Yeah, that’s insane.  I’ve had mine for about as long as Lena and it’s still in great shape.  Do you use a rope bag/tarp?

Petzl says to retire hardware with greater than 1mm of material loss. 

Maybe let more rope slide through your hand when lowering. If you over grip I could see this damage happening over time. Let the device do the work.

Gri1  metal lasts waaaay longer than the Gri2

The Gri2 is about to be super cheap now that the 3 is out

More 'Groovy' pics for those interested. Mine is about 3 years old. I've used it both for development, which means thicker (10mm) static ropes and often very dirty environments and general belaying. It's to the point now where there's pretty notable 'rope creep' even on a 10mm line. The second pic seems to show how worn the pinch point is, when the cam is partially engaged.
I'm thinking about getting a Rig or ID for development, but it's hard to let-go of the minimalism of having a single belay device for everything. Anyone have experience with the gri gri plus wearing out? It seems like the steel plate might help significantly!?