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Re: [dirtme] Omega Cam Breaking!:
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trenchdigger
Nov 27, 2007, 10:46 PM
Views: 26973
Registered: Mar 9, 2003
Posts: 1447
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dirtme wrote: I sent the photos and cam to Michael. I'd reserve judgement on the quality of the equipment or my climbing ability until everything has been sorted out. [image]http://www.rockclimbing.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?do=post_attachment;postatt_id=1646;[/image]
We all appreciate your proactiveness with this, regardless of which side of the fence we sit on.
I'm not trying to point a finger at you, dirtme, but I still question the placement of this cam. From the photo of the placement, we can see that the cam is placed at an angle about 45 degrees from vertical. Though you're climbing up and left, when you fell, gravity pulled you straight down and likely pulled nearly vertically on the cam as the tension in the rope peaked.
My engineering background <non-scientifically based speculation follows> tells me that although these link cams are just as strong as others when loaded in a lab setting (a "perfect" crack, and loaded inline with the placement) they may not be as durable when it comes to off-axis, torqueing loads such as this case. I own the same red link cam, and to be quite honest, I'm not sure I would have had so mouch faith in it in that placement.
While the rounded pod is an ideal seat for the lobes of a regular cam, I think it may have contributed to the failure here. By preventing the cam head from rotating to take the load of the fall on its main axis, the cam lobes were forced to take a portion of the load parallel to the cam axle. Loading a segmented cam in this way is far from ideal. I'm still confident in OP's unique design, but I think this incident may highlight an inherent weakness in cams with this segmented lobe design.</non-scientifically based speculation complete>
I wonder if O.P. did any testing with link cams in these types of loading orientations. If so, I'm curious about the results. It will definitely be interesting to see what results come of this investigation.
(This post was edited by trenchdigger on Nov 27, 2007, 10:49 PM)
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Edit Log:
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Post edited by trenchdigger
() on Nov 27, 2007, 10:48 PM
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Post edited by trenchdigger
() on Nov 27, 2007, 10:49 PM
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