Who else would like to see more wide cams on the market?

Stem length:
I had to make a longer stem because the lobes were big enough to hit your fingers as you pulled the trigger. Making the trigger travel length shorter by anchoring the wire closer to the axle could have worked, but that would have made the trigger a real bear to pull.

Quick bump to say I'm still waiting to hear back from Tom@VG. Word is he has some 9" sitting one shelf and will be starting another run of them in a month or so, but I'd like to verify that with him directly.

Still waiting on a response from Tom, and frankly the wait is making me lean towards going through with it. Still going to give him a week or so as I work the 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon thing to get to him, and will update both here and on ST regardless of how it ends up.

Well, I heard back from Tom@VG and while he has a couple sitting around he's fine with me making some. I'll give some thought to design over the next couple days and do some rough cost estimates, then report back.

I've painstakingly designed an 11" piece that I wood be available to reproduce by request. The beauty of the design is that it is customizable to the exact width of yer project OW catastrophe (great for all those odd sizes) and with the right tools it has an unmatched range for one-time placements on lead. It currently only comes in one color "Nude", but don't let that discourage you... most people know exactly where it is on their harness without even looking. So branch out from cams and don't pine for that VG, instead spruce up your rack with the Woody 11"

Matt Kuehl wrote:I've painstakingly designed an 11" piece that I wood be available to reproduce by request. The beauty of the design is that it is customizable to the exact width of yer project OW catastrophe (great for all those odd sizes) and with the right tools it has an unmatched range for one-time placements on lead. It currently only comes in one color "Nude", but don't let that discourage you... most people know exactly where it is on their harness without even looking. So branch out from cams and don't pine for that VG, instead spruce up your rack with the Woody 11"

hilariously well put

have you fallen on the W11?

No falls onto the W11 yet... it's proof that this ground breaking product increases your climbing ability ten folds.

And it's pretty difficult to fall out of an 11" crack unless you're too big to fit inside, which is possible i guess...

Kent Pease wrote: The old BD #4 is a horror size and it would be good to have a better transition to the next size up (old #4.5/new #5).

I love the old BD #4!! It is perfect hand stacks for me. The #4.5 is perfect hand/fist stacks. LOL

I agree the new BD sizing sucks.

I'd really like to see that woody 11" pull tested!!

Ok Folks, finally got a chance to run some numbers and think on it some, and here's what I propose.... I still don't like the idea of edging in on Tom@VG, so the price will be $175 for a 9" cam, same as Tom's. He's got some sitting on the shelf, and knowing just how much time and money he has tied up in it I'm not all that inclined to undercut him for a similar design. I've got a couple improvements in mind that up the manufacturing costs (mostly in the proof of concept/testing area), so if the higher than expected price is a turn-off, sorry. Tom's got several sitting, so give him a holler if a proven design is more your speed.

That said, what I have in mind is an open-source custom-made cam made to whatever basic layout you all decide upon. Improvements I have in mind are much, much larger diameter axle to help prevent buckling, a quasi-log spiral on the lobes to exchange holding power for expansion range in the last 25% of rotation (proven concept and used on the SuperCam, in case you weren't aware), and a couple weight saving tweaks to the stem and trigger system. I'm still not convinced one way or the other on the single vs dual axle thing, so I'll leave that all up to you. If I get 4 people to commit, I'll make them. Mind you, delivering 4 will involve making 6, of which 2 will be pulled to failure (one at 25% expansion, one at 75% expansion). And to be honest, I'll probably make 8 so I get one and can send one to Stephane at the Nuts Museum, but I'll eat those costs.

Thoughts / comments?

-aric.

Aric.

Props to you for trying to fill a void in the market or at least add options. Also happy to see that you are going to test your product before sending it out to the field. Given your passion for gear and engineering, I am sure that you will research and test this well beyond what is required.

I don't have any use for a monster cam at this time. I also don't have the spare cash to spend $175 on a piece of gear that would spend most of its time in my gear closet. If I did have the need and cash, I would order. I am sure that if you do this, you will do it right.

Best of luck with your venture!

Edit to add: The one Valley Giant cam I held was a real work of craftsmanship. My positive response to Aric making big pro is in no way a negative reflection of Tom and the Valley Giant cams.

Aric Datesman wrote:Ok Folks, finally got a chance to run some numbers and think on it some, and here's what I propose.... I still don't like the idea of edging in on Tom@VG, so the price will be $175 for a 9" cam, same as Tom's. He's got some sitting on the shelf, and knowing just how much time and money he has tied up in it I'm not all that inclined to undercut him for a similar design. I've got a couple improvements in mind that up the manufacturing costs (mostly in the proof of concept/testing area), so if the higher than expected price is a turn-off, sorry. Tom's got several sitting, so give him a holler if a proven design is more your speed. That said, what I have in mind is an open-source custom-made cam made to whatever basic layout you all decide upon. Improvements I have in mind are much, much larger diameter axle to help prevent buckling, a quasi-log spiral on the lobes to exchange holding power for expansion range in the last 25% of rotation (proven concept and used on the SuperCam, in case you weren't aware), and a couple weight saving tweaks to the stem and trigger system. I'm still not convinced one way or the other on the single vs dual axle thing, so I'll leave that all up to you. If I get 4 people to commit, I'll make them. Mind you, delivering 4 will involve making 6, of which 2 will be pulled to failure (one at 25% expansion, one at 75% expansion). And to be honest, I'll probably make 8 so I get one and can send one to Stephane at the Nuts Museum, but I'll eat those costs. Thoughts / comments? -aric.

I'd be interested Aric. I have a VG#9 and it's great so, like you said, if people "want the wide" now, hit up Tom for a proven product.

My thoughts on "Big Cams" and my low mileage usage of them on some OW. I'm by no means an OW guru.

- Double Axel is a must IMO. I know people RAVE about the WC #6 but in my experience, the lobes tend to flip or invert on one side. Not good. With rope drag, the rope pushing on the cams and all the all weird crap that happens when you get into the antics of climbing the OW, I've just noticed the WC single axels have more issues than the BD#6 which WILL NOT invert at all. It also seems easier to push the BD#6 along with you as you struggle upwards.
- like the idea of having "extended" range on the wide open side. Often, as you push a cam along and you get into the tipped out area, I'd much rather have just a bit more range than massive holding power.
- Weight and compactness. The VG#9 is a BEAST to carry and deploy. If you carry it in the "closed" position it can be hard to deploy in desperate situations. It would be cool to have some sort of spring activated release on the trigger. Pull and Set in the "locked" position for climbing. When you pull the trigger again the "lock" springs open allowing full cam deployment.
- Have some sort of sling built in. I've hand tied one on my VG but it's bulky and not ideal.

Hey Aric, are you still kicking this idea around? I'm interested. The lighter the better is my input, a lock-out in the closed position would be cool too.

I am tired of soiling myself in zion i am down...

Howdy Folks,

Sorry for ignoring this thread for a bit... I'm at the tail end of a year long project restoring a ~1850 vintage schoolhouse and haven't had a chance to follow up on this.

I'm still game, and between the response here and what I've gotten privately it looks like there's more than enough interest. Sounds like a large double axle option is what people are looking for, so I've been spending what little free time I've had lately fixing issues with my lobe-generation program (skipping half dozen versions of Mathematica didn't go as smoothly as hoped... the single axle version is now working, and is the basis for the much more complicated dual axle one that needs to be fixed).

For typical log-spiral cam lobes this wouldn't have been a big deal, but I'm interested in exploring what advantages there are with what John Field did with the SuperCam and the quasi-logarithmic spiral he used to trade expansion for holding power as the lobe rotates outward (IIRC he made mention of this on RC a number of years ago WRT using his Cam Fitter software on the SuperCam). Interesting stuff, and easiest way to explain it is the following pic:

What's pictured is a theoretical single axle cam lobe, with the Red one using a 14 degree cam angle, the Orange one using a 15 degree cam angle and the Blue one using a quasi-logarithmic spiral that closely follows the 14 degree spiral for most of its rotation and then increases to ~18 degree cam angle at the end and ultimately achieves a bit more range than the 15 degree cam angle lobe. I'm still not completely sold on the idea WRT single axle, but need to play with it more once I get the double axle program fixed to see if it makes much of a difference there.

Anyway, once I get the program working again I'll ping everyone for more input and likely start a new thread for this project.

-aric.

BTW, if you're in the mood for a brain teaser, the radial lines in the pic are placed at every 10% of expansion for each curve. Took a bit to get my head around why the angles worked out like that, at which point I really bought into the intrinsic beauty of the log spiral.

BTW x2- then again, looking once more at that pic (which I made 3 weeks ago) I think there's a problem with the angle calculation for each 10% of the Blue curve. The math's not actually that hard; it's more that log spirals are self-similar in rotation and I never quite got my head around working in polar coordinates. So for now kindly ignore the Blue radial lines as I think they're incorrectly placed. And frankly, long story short they were only added to help me work through figuring out the formula to calculate the theoretical maximum range of a cam lobe with an increasing cam angle, so they don't really mean anything anyway.

Aric Datesman wrote:BTW x2- then again, looking once more at that pic (which I made 3 weeks ago) I think there's a problem with the angle calculation for each 10% of the Blue curve. The math's not actually that hard; it's more that log spirals are self-similar in rotation and I never quite got my head around working in polar coordinates. So for now kindly ignore the Blue radial lines as I think they're incorrectly placed. And frankly, long story short they were only added to help me work through figuring out the formula to calculate the theoretical maximum range of a cam lobe with an increasing cam angle, so they don't really mean anything anyway.

Actually, scratch that. The angles are in fact calculated and plotted correctly. The radial lines are plotted for every 10% of expansion, not 10% of rotation and for some reason I was thinking the rotation should be similar between the lines, which is incorrect for the variable cam angle curve.

Unless I misunderstand what you mean by 10% expansion, there is a problem for all the lines. A logarithmic spiral with a pitch of 14 degrees expands by 10% every 21.9 degrees of rotation. If the pitch is 15 degrees, it takes 20.38 degrees to expand by 10%.

There are too many 10% expansions within 90 degrees in the figure, even if one looks at 10% of the smallest radius, instead of the current radius. (That is, if one takes the sequence of expansion factors to be (1 + n*0.1) instead of (1.1)^n.

Moreover, the orange rays should always occur for lower angles than the corresponding red rays, and the blue rays should be in between the others until the blue spiral becomes the largest.

Hmm... I suspect I'm simply explaining it poorly, but as I mentioned earlier I have trouble thinking in polar so perhaps there is an error there.

It gets funny with the quasi-log spiral, so let's get on the same page with traditional lobes first. Here's a new plot for just a 14 degree cam angle lobe and a 15 degree cam angle lobe, both of which are centered in a 100mm wide crack and touching both sides (thereby giving the theoretical maximum size lobe possible in that configuration). From my perspective, 0% expansion is where the lobe is touching both sides of the crack and 100% expansion is where only the very tip of the lobe is touching the crack at it's tangent angle (there's a bit more range available as the lobe fully opens and the tip passes the tangent angle, but I'm ignoring that since bearing loads on the tip go way up and the material will likely yield before it comes into play).

Equations for the curves are:
RedCurve[Theta] = 50 * Exp[Tan[14Degree] * Theta]
OrangeCurve[Theta] = 50* Exp[Tan[15Degree] * Theta]

Other variables involved are:
RedRotation = Rotation of the unit curve to get it to fit the 50mm minimum
RedMaxAngle = Rotation beyond RedRotation to get where the curve intersects the other side of the crack
RedRangeRed = RedCurve[RedMaxAngle] - RedCurve[RedRotation]

OrangeRotation = Rotation of the unit curve to get it to fit the 50mm minimum
OrangeMaxAngle = Rotation beyond OrangeRotation to get where the curve intersects the other side of the crack
OrangeRange = RedCurve[OrangeMaxAngle] - RedCurve[OrangeRotation]

From there I have the program solve for the rotation needed to fit the curve to:

RedCurve[Theta + X] = RedCurve[Theta] + RangeRed * .10
RedCurve[Theta + X] = RedCurve[Theta] + RangeRed * .20
RedCurve[Theta + X] = RedCurve[Theta] + RangeRed * .30....

And so on.

For the 14 Deg lobe I get the following: (sorry for the lack of formatting)
% Range / rotation degrees from tan angle / % total rotation
10% / 14.1 deg / 12.5%
20% / 27.3 deg / 24.3%
30% / 39.9 deg / 35.4%
40% / 51.8 deg / 46.0%
50% / 63.1 deg / 56.1%
60% / 73.8 deg / 65.6%
70% / 84.1 deg / 74.8%
80% / 94.0 deg / 83.5%
90% / 103.4 deg / 91.9%
100% / 112.5 deg / 100%

Perhaps that clears things up? I hope? :-)

Why not

RedCurve[RedRotation + X] = RedCurve[RedRotation] + RangeRed * .10

Because I basically slept through all of my Mathematica lab classes 15 years ago and didn't want to diverge from the FindRoot[] examples too much? :-)

Edit- crap. More like 20 years ago. :-(

Edit x2- also the equations above are a simplified version of what's actually in the program to make this discussion easier. The program acutually allows for non-coaxial lobes (dual axle and single-axle approximations of dual axle), defining of minimum amounts of material around the axle, clearance on the opposite side of the crack when fully retracted, quasi-log spirals and a bunch of other things. It grew kinda organically as I added features, and i never went back to simplify things like that which were basically equivalent and already working.

Edit x3 (so I can stop thinking about this and get some sleep)- Actually, what you propose is what's in the program... Looks like I did a crap job of fixing what the MP post interface did to the Mathematica code, and my only excuse is that I was in keeping a 2 year old occupied while doing it. And then the subsequent edits while watching the Olympics. Sorry about that, should have given it my full attention. The actual code from the program is as follows, with regang1 being the angle at 10%, "\[Rho]reg" the rotation constant for the unit curve to touch the minimum expansion, regrange the range of the lobe and angle1 being 0.10 (for 10% of the range... the next lines have angle2 as .20, angle3 as .30, etc...)

regang1 = x /. FindRoot[reg[x + \[Rho]reg] == reg[\[Rho]reg] + regrange*angle1, {x,0 Degree}];