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Product failure?

T

Tembo

New Member
Joined
Nov 9, 2022
Messages
26
Has anyone had happen,seen or heard about a rope, carabiner, webbing or prussic rope itself actually breaking while hunting? I get that accidents happen through user error etc. I’m not talking about that, what I’m asking is say somebody was hunting at height, and some part of there system just broke from load?
 
Bigterp said:
Saw a spliced eye come apart & a bent carabiner. Carabiner looked side loaded & no telling with the spliced eye. Both were from a big name brand saddle company…. But that’s about it from what you mentioned above. Also seen a few amsteel rope mods that were cut by a sharp edge on sticks/ platforms
Click to expand...
Yikes on that carabiner and splice! I have an idea which brand you are talking about and I use a rope and biner from them. For over two seasons. I’m confident in mine but that’s just another reason to check my ropes for frays and biners for cross-loads, which I have had on my LB before and it’s way to easy to miss it while you climb.
 
Saw some pictures of a madrock safeguard snap
 
Its obviously very rare for rated gear to simply fail under proper use, we need to know the circumstances before being able to draw any worthwhile conclusions.
 
Guy was rappelling on Oplux at the end of his sit. What else is there needed to know? The device had a catastrophic failure.

Do to out of spec rope?
Part of the normal failure rate of the device?
Who knows…
 
deerfly said:
I disagree, clearly there is more to know when something like this happens.
Click to expand...
Mechanical belay devices fail more often that you realize. gTHI and Beal both have had recalls on theirs in the past 5 years. I didn’t search out Madrock but every thing and anyone can have a bad batch especially without a good quality control department
www.cpsc.gov

GTHI Recalls Climbing Belay Devices Due to Fall and Injury Hazards

Consumers should immediately stop using the recalled devices and contact Trango for instructions on receiving a free replacement.
www.cpsc.gov www.cpsc.gov
www.cpsc.gov

Birdie Belay Devices Recalled Due to Risk of Injury; Made by Beal Sas

Consumers should immediately stop using the recalled Beal Birdie Belay Devices and contact Liberty Mountain for a free replacement.
www.cpsc.gov www.cpsc.gov
 
well, a couple things come to mind.

1) 8mm oplux is at the low end of the rope diameter supported so when the cams are fully engaged there would be less force on the assembly than there would be with a larger diameter rope.

2) The device is not designed to tolerate a lot of side pressure. Not just MR either, all these mechanical belays and progress capture devices won't tolerate side loading. Looking at the picture it appears there was some kind of side loading to break the side plate like that.

Just asking questions, not challenging you. Knowing what we know leaves me wondering..
 
deerfly said:
well, a couple things come to mind.

1) 8mm oplux is at the low end of the rope diameter supported so when the cams are fully engaged there would be less force on the assembly than there would be with a larger diameter rope.

2) The device is not designed to tolerate a lot of side pressure. Not just MR either, all these mechanical belays and progress capture devices won't tolerate side loading. Looking at the picture it appears there was some kind of side loading to break the side plate like that.

Just asking questions, not challenging you. Knowing what we know leaves me wondering..
Click to expand...
Correct. Something can and will cause failure but I am just stating sometimes it’s a flaw from the factory as well. It almost seems like an autoblock or friction hitch pulled into the device to break it that way. Or perhaps as you said it was severely side loaded on the load plate.
 
Fl Canopy Stalker said:
Mechanical belay devices fail more often that you realize. gTHI and Beal both have had recalls on theirs in the past 5 years. I didn’t search out Madrock but every thing and anyone can have a bad batch especially without a good quality control department
www.cpsc.gov

GTHI Recalls Climbing Belay Devices Due to Fall and Injury Hazards

Consumers should immediately stop using the recalled devices and contact Trango for instructions on receiving a free replacement.
www.cpsc.gov www.cpsc.gov
www.cpsc.gov

Birdie Belay Devices Recalled Due to Risk of Injury; Made by Beal Sas

Consumers should immediately stop using the recalled Beal Birdie Belay Devices and contact Liberty Mountain for a free replacement.
www.cpsc.gov www.cpsc.gov
Click to expand...

well confirmed recalls are a form of "more" information.

I get the QC thing too, most mfr's randomly test vs every device. So some failures can slip through, but its still very low probability.

So maybe MR has a bad batch now or was there some other explanation for the failure?
 
deerfly said:
well, a couple things come to mind.

1) 8mm oplux is at the low end of the rope diameter supported so when the cams are fully engaged there would be less force on the assembly than there would be with a larger diameter rope.

2) The device is not designed to tolerate a lot of side pressure. Not just MR either, all these mechanical belays and progress capture devices won't tolerate side loading. Looking at the picture it appears there was some kind of side loading to break the side plate like that.

Just asking questions, not challenging you. Knowing what we know leaves me wondering..
Click to expand...

Oplux is out of spec on the Safeguard. Minimum rope diameter is 8.9mm in the spec. Oplux is 8. I don’t know how it could be side loaded on a rappel. All the weight is on that tab it seems. Probably void in the metal. Or maybe it was dropped and fractured prior to this?
 
deerfly said:
I disagree, clearly there is more to know when something like this happens.
Click to expand...
I agree.

Looking at this photo, the only thing that broke is the lever, which allows you to release the grip of the safeguard and that's all. It looks like the biner attachment for both plates is still intact, and you can see his thumb on the part that does the actual grabbing on the rope. If the lever is all that snapped and he took a ride to the ground, I would expect he should have been taking that ride regardless, because it wouldn't have been grabbing the rope he was using even when the device was in working order. So, given this picture and how the safeguard works, and the fact he was using a rope that a lot of people use without incident, what else could have contributed to falling the rest of the way down? Seems like there is something missing, or it's simply don't use rope that's out of spec.

If this broke on mine, I'd be expecting to try and figure out a different way down my rope, since the handle couldn't be used to release the tension anymore. Is it concerning it broke to begin with? Hell yeah. But the more information on what really happened, besides it broke and he fell, the better.
 
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