Recently, I had an Alien cam (the purple size, which is roughly equivalent to the #1 BD cam) completely fail on me. The failure was catastrophic: the lobes completely separated from the stem. I realize that cams can fail when placed poorly, but this cam was set very carefully and properly in a clean, hand-sized crack. What's more, the previous day I encountered a climber who had a small blue Alien break when he fell on it while leading. To be sure, my stories are purely anecdotal, but I seem to keep finding climbers who have their own Alien "horror" stories. Am I the only one who thinks this is an issue? While I'm not out to slam the manufacturers at CCH, I'd like to hear if anyone else has their own examples of cam failure/problems.

Here's to hoping that I'm crazy and have just been very unlucky,

ANDY PATTERSON

unless you decide to climb with them they're perfectly safe!

like dude,,,,,, WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN????

DID YOU CHECK THE DATES?????
DID YOU LOOK FOR THE DIMPLE AT THE BASE OF THE KNOB?????

IF YOU HAVNT DONT USE EM!!!!!

Dude, what I can't beleive is you used a purple alien!
that size is for retards. If your gonna use aliens at least
get the badass sizes. Black through red. I understand
some people don't use them at all because of their history of being
"unsafe",but come on a purple alien!
josh
P.S. You seriously are just finding this out?
you know.....that purple aliens retarded.

Aliens don't kill, they just want the same opportunity to the pursuit of happyness as everyone else.

(I use purple, but then again, I am a retard)

andy-

what are the dates on these cams?

can you check the recall posting at http://www.aliencamsbycch.com and give us more detailed information/photos?

I wouldn't trust a single one that wasn't independently pull tested.

Additionally, even after some of the cams have been recalled there have been issues with quality control-oops- there are lots of threads on this at rockclimbing.com

I have no idea if cch has fixed the problems they had. Hopefully they have
If you are like me and have some aliens that are from the recall time (i had 5 that were from the month prior to the recall), but don't trust cch to do it, and don't have a pull tester at home---here is a guy that is doing pull testing.
He tested some of my cams and took pics of them being tested so that i could verify they were tested. Having them tested have brought them back to my rack.

http://www.rockclimbing.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=18>>>>>

Hey Andy,
You didn't mention if you got hurt or not. Hope not....

Post up some pics of the broken Alien. I'd love to see the failure mode.

Mal

They appear to have no formal process control. This means manufacturing variation is not monitored (ie, 3 sigma). This means the process is out of control and nobody has any idea what percent can be expected to fail (ie, where the ends of the bell curve are - or how "flat" that bell curve is). Anecdotes of so and so's Aliens holding a fall or some other's Aliens holding a pull test are utterly insignificant and meaningless in the context of what it takes to effect real process control and monitoring - and people speaking of these things as if they have meaning are only demonstrating their cluelessness. That said, the "Testing" section of CCH's website is disturbing. If you have any engineering process control experience, you'll certainly find the site to be a joke (or a nightmare if you're still using these things). Have a look.

The only indicator we have is the number of failure reports on the internet. Given how often a climber whips to the point of generating 1k lb+ forces (or whatever) at the gear placement, that any are failing at all is quite disturbing to me. It suggests a very flat and wide bell curve - ie, horrible process quality and control. The failure mode on post dimple recall Aliens is also very disturbing - ie, what appears to me as overheating the fine wire they use (ie, high strand count cable overcooked in brazing process perhaps to compensate for the undercooking of prior failures).

I've had my Master Cams for 2 mos now and feel they are superior in every way to Aliens. Thus, I have no reason to use Aliens or bother with this "test a couple and speculate" circus. I think Master Cams will take a year or two to catch on and will put CCH out of business, if the lawsuits don't get them first. Also consider REI, MGear, Neptune's and many others have dropped CCH.

healyje to thread!!!!

healyje to thread!!!!

There's a lot of talk about independently testing the tensile strength... who does this? Is there somewhere to get them both reslung and tested?

my aliens are over 10 years old and none have even failed. so i continue to use my purple alien and some other odd colored large ones. I love the look on peoples faces when you pull out the HUGE alien. Most have no idea anything other than black, blue, green, yellow, red exist. I have a grey, purple and orange also. wish they had a #6 camalot equivalent...now that would be something.

There is only one way to save yourself from Aliens! Let me have them and I will hide them on my gearsling. Please only send black through red, I will pay S&H.
josh

Aric-- let me be the first to welcome you to Mountain Project. Your posts have been welcome data points in a sea of speculation...

Thanks Larry. I'd heard that the signal/noise ratio over here was much better, so finally got around to taking a look and stumbled upon this thread. So far I'm liking it here... :-)