I remember previous discussion by Russ Walling about possibly selling an "Alien tester." Anyone know if anything came of that? If so, I'd definitely be up for buying stuff to test a few Aliens.

As for the pictures Andy posted, I'm no expert, but it looks to me like the cable failed, not the braze since a portion of the cable is still inside the head of the cam (or braze, or something).

Is the piece marked as tensile tested?

Jay

As far as I know, we don't know yet. Though some have speculated that it wasn't stamped, since no pictures were provided for the stamp.

do we know yet whether the cam was actually stamped "tensile tested"? because I have a cam from late 2006 that isnt stamped.. I'm not sure why since they claimed they would be stamping, but possibly this cam wasnt stamped either.

I have such a device. It's called a vise and a funkness. The vise was $20 at Harbor Freight (cheap Chinese junk, even more shoddily thrown together than recent Aliens). The funkness... I don't even know where that came from anymore, but it's powered out a few pins in its day.

Anyways, I have taken a number of whippers onto Aliens (and Friends, and nuts, and Camalots) but I don't think I'll ever buy another one. I've tested the ones I do have, and should probably do so again.

Those pictures are pretty disturbing. If you're climbing on Aliens without testing them, you're taking a much greater risk than is justified (in my mind). Funk and bounce...

At this point I wouldn't depend on or trust anyone but myself to test my aliens - in my case, two sets of hybrids.

Pictures are worth a thousand words. Some extra words that you should all know...CCH has had these photos for a couple weeks now. Allegedly, they say that it isn't a failed braze, that the cam must have been over an edge, etc. Judge for yourself...

As with previous Alien failures, this is the most disturbing aspect. Once again, CCH appears to be blaming their obvious fuck-up on something or someone else. It is becoming increasingly difficult (for me, at least) to have any confidence in these guys.

Curt

The most important detail of the accident, as I see it, is:
what was the next peice of pro below the alien, and
how far down to it.
(If he climbed up to the 50 foot mark, fired in a peice, and then continued 20 feet up to the alien, well then its only his fault.
On the other hand, if there was another peice 5 feet below the alien, then he just got a really shitty belay - but its still not CCH's fault he hit the ground)

I know people are more concerned with the details of the alien - and I don't mean to side track - but as far as the totality of the accident is concerned - a single broken peice of gear does not seem to be enough for a climber to fall to the ground from 70 feet up without at least one other failure occuring in the system.

Question for some one familiar with "sounders crack"

Does the crack lean to the left?

josh

In terms of the vise and funkness, a couple of quick questions. How do you attach the Alien to the vise? Do you just place it as if the vise was a crack of appropriate size? Or do you somehow tie it to something else that goes in the vise? Second, to what do you attach the vise?

I don't want to break whatever the vise is attached to rather than popping out the Alien. Finally, I assume that you need to pull the hammer in a downward direction to get sufficient force to really test the Alien, is that right?

so perhaps a better strategy would be to sacrifice a roll of 5mm cord and test all of the Aliens in my possession to hold 5kN.

The vise is bolted to my workbench. I shut the vise to about the middle of the expansion range and bounce it a few times with the hammer. A long time ago, Andy Kirkapatrick wrote about using 3mm, 4mm, 5mm cord to get familiar with what various shock loads "felt" like. If you blow up a loop of 3mm cord, it is about 1.5 kN of applied force, give or take a bit. A loop of 4mm cord is about 3.5 kN of applied force, and a loop of 5mm cord is about 5.5 kN of force. This depends a great deal on which cord, what condition, and how it is loaded, but I would like for my cams to absorb at least a good 3-5 kN without any trouble, so perhaps a better strategy would be to sacrifice a roll of 5mm cord and test all of the Aliens in my possession to hold 5kN. If I am going to do that, I suppose another fix-it would be to put a groove into a piece of leftover slate tile (I have a bunch from re-tiling our kitchen floor) and bolt the vise to a beam for a few hours, using that for the jaws. It's a lot more realistic, and easier to funk. Bounce, bounce, snap. Either the loop breaks at rated strength or the cam doesn't. Some of my aliens should probably be retired anyways, they look like shit and the heads are quite sticky. But none of them failed on my unscientific funking expedition last year, and god knows I'm not going to buy new ones.
!

Speaking of CCH, unless i'm blind, has a rep from there even checked out this thread? It would be nice to hear some kind of response from them, if they haven't already provided one.

It would be nice, but don't count on it. They are probably being advised by legal counsel to NOT reply to threads such as this.