How to retire a gear properly?

Hi folks,

Today I made a very stupid mistake by dropping my ATC device when I was 30m up. My partner suggested me to retire the device since it may have been damaged during the impact.

What is the right way to put this device away? Send it back to the company that make it to destroy it? Or make a mark saying it's damaged?

I don't want someone to find the device in many years later and use it.

Thanks

All my gear that I have retired has a wad of red tape to let me know. If you are really worried take a side snips and cut the wire in half, it will be obvious that it out of commission. Just start a pile of retired gear for decoration for sentimental reasons or what ever.

If you really don't wanna climb on it anymore you may dispose of it by mailing it to me. I'll PM you my address.

If tarp doesn't want it, i'LLC take it.

Thanks guys for some comments. I guess I will keep it around as a good reminder for the mistake I made.

Mailing it back can be a productive action, as companies usually love to do testing on their 'injured' gear. Might get a coupon for something later too.

That gear is %100 reliable.

Use it.

All these myths that gear is unusable is crazy.

BASE1361 wrote:That gear is %100 reliable. Use it. All these myths that gear is unusable is crazy.

This.

Do a bit of research on metalurgy.

Microfractures in climbing gear are a myth.

I regretted retiring a figure 8 I had years ago because I dropped it 40 ft. Microfractures are a superstition.

But since we are on the subject, to decommission the Figure 8 I put it in a vise and sawed it into pieces and then threw them away. For retired ropes I do the same thing.

Aluminum and nylon are recyclable you know.

There is more info on this thread about this subject:

mountainproject.com/v/climb…

As far as micro cracks, that is something that is due to fatigue loading, not impact caused by dropping a piece of gear. I dropped my BD ATC from about that height, I just filed down the burs and it works just fine. As long as you have no sharp edges to cut the rope, it will be perfectly usable as it is not really a load taking that much of a load, your biner is taking most of the load.

I dropped a locker and a BD C4 95 feet when I slipped setting up a belay. That was 2 years ago and they still work just fine. Don't worry about it. Make sure there are no sharp edges and start using it again.

Someone dropped a few of my quickdraws 300 feet once. They probably hit bushes and trees on the way down but they might have landed directly on the rocks that I found them on. I still use them.

Professional climber that dropped them too... I shoulda made her get me new ones from her sponsor!

It may be a myth that impact causes microfractures and aluminum weakening, but the fatigue issues are real. I think that's what caused this in the paragliding community:

DHV carabiner failure

I think there have been a few other instances in the free-flight community. Thus, steel 'biners are frequently used instead. I read about a failure immediately after dropping it on a rock.. may have been coincidence. Sorry I can't provide better links! I would like to learn more about the dangers, if any, of dropped gear, too.

update:
Another failure

aluminum is recyclable. take it with a truckload of beer cans and get $20 to buy a new one.

also, it probably wasn't damaged. unless there is a portion on your ATC that would physically damage your rope, it will still function properly. Cams are definitely something to worry about more in this situation.

I retire harnesses by cutting everything up so no one else digs it out and uses is. This is what I do with all 'soft' gear.

If you're really really worried you can put it into some sort of climbing related artwork and frame it. No one will steal it.

Thanks folks for your advice,

Yeah I have picked up a new one since my partner's life worth more than the device :) But I would like to frame it up or so since it has some sentimental value :)

Cheers,

Be sure to retire any carabiners that have slapped against the rock in a fall too, they are certainly time bombs.

It looks like those paragliding biners are loaded differently than climbing carabiners. The paraglider biners look like they are loaded with a wide webbing strap. This would create a relatively large moment around the radius. MOST climbing carabiners tend to be loaded at the radius so the moment is relatively low. Also can't a paragliding biner be cycle loaded a couple hundred times in flight due to turbulence and increased force when turning?

Dan G. wrote:It may be a myth that impact causes microfractures and aluminum weakening, but the fatigue issues are real. I think that's what caused this in the paragliding community: DHV carabiner failure I think there have been a few other instances in the free-flight community. Thus, steel 'biners are frequently used instead. I read about a failure immediately after dropping it on a rock.. may have been coincidence. Sorry I can't provide better links! I would like to learn more about the dangers, if any, of dropped gear, too. update: Another failure

That latter blog post is interesting. This guy seems to suggest that micro fractures occur in aluminum, but not in steel. He is also inferring that this information comes from BD.

Now obviously alloy and heat treatment will be factors here, but I was (and still am) under the impression that exactly the opposite was true. Steel is typically far more prone to cracking than aluminum, since aluminum is so much softer, correct?

Just guessing here, but the location of those breaks makes me think fatigue more than micro cracks. Cyclical loading would bend that location over and over. If the design or materials were poor that cyclical loading could result in a fatigue failure.

Just a comment from the peanut gallery.

shoo wrote: That latter blog post is interesting. This guy seems to suggest that micro fractures occur in aluminum, but not in steel. He is also inferring that this information comes from BD. Now obviously alloy and heat treatment will be factors here, but I was (and still am) under the impression that exactly the opposite was true. Steel is typically far more prone to cracking than aluminum, since aluminum is so much softer, correct?

That blog post is repeating the apocryphal stories about "micro fractures." The guy says he worked in the BD workspace, but on sewn nylon stuff.

Microscopic cracks do occur in both aluminum and steel, but they come from and are propagated by fatigue from cyclic loading, not from impact damage. For example, bicycle cranks occasionally break: a tiny crack forms at a stress riser, propagates under load, and you don't see it if you aren't checking. On some day by the time it's cracked a third or so of the way through, it just snaps when you pedal. But it was macroscopically cracked already. This happens in both steel and aluminum. Aluminum is actually more vulnerable because it is not as strong per equal volume and it has no fatigue limit (limit below which cracking will not occur).

The broken paragliding biner looks like an example of fatigue, not of impact damage. It also looks like it broke at a sharp bend in the biner, which I would think is a design problem.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal…

However, most climbing gear, unlike paragliding gear or bicycle cranks, is not typically subject to cyclic loads, but to a small number of high loads. So the failure mechanisms for say a climbing biner are different. There are exceptions, like a bolt that gets toproped off or fallen on repeatedly, I guess.