Structural Failure of Black Diamond Ultralight Camalot Size 0.4 Resulting in Injury

I'd be interested to know what the failure load is for a 0.4 in a tight placement with a small amount of flare.

send the cam back to BD, as i'm sure they would be happy to look at it.

I have an X4 0.4 that deformed similarly (although it didn't pull). The inside edge of the lobe cutout compressed enough that it now catches on the other axle and can't rotate freely.

(orders plenty of extra yellow totems to sell to Brian and friends....)  

;)

Its funny that my aliens are covered in flatspots and still hold whips.

The idea that BD should give you a new cam is crazy. Gear has a functional  lifespan, ultralight gear exponentially so.
I have a set of ultra lights from 1 to 4.  I don't take them cragging.

If you core shot your skinny rope working a route, you wouldn't complain to the rope company. There is an obvious distinction in the type of rope you used and what you used it for.

Glad your okay. Good job going for it. In the smaller sizes I do think single axle cams are best. 

Hard to tell from the photo, but it looks like the lobe is gouged, not bent.  (Material was removed, rather than deformed).  If so, it is bad luck or user error rather than defect.

Is it likely that a crystal was under this area? Did the leader not extend and have the cam walk slightly with the hard traverse left? Sure, the answer could very well be yes to both. Just blaming it fully on the placement though is missing the forest in the trees here. Read what Patto wrote, check his link and go over it with an open mind.

In a small dual axle cam the amount of material in the lobe in an overcam placement is ridiculously thin, look at an image and think about this, it's incredibly thin there and the shape of the cut out does not lend itself to a strong structure:

I recall a thread on ukclimbing a few years back where a former wild country engineer was posting, he had actually pushed for them to not make any dual axle cams in the BD .4/.5 size due to the thin material required. Something to the effect that while they pass pull testing fine the design was more likely to fail in the real world. Sure try to line it up with the direction of pull just right, try to avoid crystals as much as possible, but in the real world you're not going to nail either of those 100% of the time.

Personally, I use single stem cams for the BD .5 and below. That solid chunk of metal just makes me warm and fuzzy:

It looked to me that the aluminum, which is pretty soft material and cuts like butter with a drill or saw, ‘smeared’ to the side or was left on the rock, rather than pancaked.  But hard to tell.

Rob the tricam wrote: The idea that BD should give you a new cam is crazy. Gear has a functional  lifespan, ultralight gear exponentially so.

Sure, BD is not legally obligated to replace the cam. 

 But at the same time, I wouldn't be surprised if they did replace it.  Doing so encourages climbers to return gear when it fails, so that it can be analyzed, and helps retain customers as well.

FWIW I have a BD ultralight .4.; comparing a C4 .4 in the other hand, it is noticeably lighter.

Jim Turner wrote: It looked to me that the aluminum, which is pretty soft material and cuts like butter with a drill or saw, ‘smeared’ to the side or was left on the rock, rather than pancaked.  But hard to tell.

The OP said that the lobe was stuck in the retracted position (and was forced open later) because the inside of the cutout was jammed against the axle.  This could only happen if the lobe deformed/pancaked.  In Fact, you can actually see how it was deformed in this picture...

https://cdn2.apstatic.com/forum/62678.jpg

But it does look like it was smeared to the side as well.

Guys. Look at the shear lines on the lobe. You can clearly see that this thing was ripped sideways - the direction of pull was clearly perpendicular to the stem (in the direction of the lines). 

This is a textbook case of sub-optimal placement. Even so, thanks to the OP for sharing with us - its always good to know the limitations of our sport and gear. 

Briggs Lazalde wrote:

Plus with the wider lobe in that section from the pic suggests the lobe pancaked flat and not so much as sheared or removed.

Is that section of the climb notorious for placing gear blindly from a lieback position? I havent heard anyone mention wether or not the people who have had trouble in this section placed blindly.

Been a while since I've got on it. It's not hard to inspect if you pull yourself into it a tad, if you try to just hang off a straight arm the whole time I don't think you can spot it well. 

aaron hope wrote: Guys. Look at the "glacier" shear lines on the lobe. You can clearly see that this thing was ripped sideways - the direction of pull was clearly perpendicular to the stem (in the direction of the lines). 

Just in case. There are two scratches systems. One (on a wider part) is more perpendicular versus stem. Another (on a narrower part) is less perpendicular to the stem. Seems like an evidence of pivoting the cam.

Briggs Lazalde wrote:

It was glaciers that did this!! We were all way off. Now we can all laugh about it! Bring it in team bring it in. Hooray on 3.   

I think you're joking, but I removed "glacier" so there's no confusion. And, I'm assuming you're not familiar with the history of how folks figured out how Yosemite Valley was formed. Most though it was carved by rivers, but John Muir hypothesize that it was carved by glaciers moving down through the Valley - his evidence was glacier sheer line "striations" that he saw on rock slabs. Turns out he was right. 

im so glad everyone in this thread is a forensic engineer :)

but seriously, send it back and ask the BD lab to look at it

On the subject of ultralights, wasn’t there a professional guide who pulled four in a ground fall not too long ago? Including two that were an equalized belay anchor?

Ahh, here it is:
https://m.soundcloud.com/the_sharp_end/ground-fall-in-eldorado-canyon-ep-24

Corey Herbert wrote: On the subject of ultralights, wasn’t there a professional guide who pulled four in a ground fall not too long ago? Including two that were an equalized belay anchor?

Ahh, here it is:
https://m.soundcloud.com/the_sharp_end/ground-fall-in-eldorado-canyon-ep-24

Yep... These placements were in a horizontal crack.  The speculation is that the rigid stem of the UL's contributed to the failure.

Guy H. wrote:

Yep... These placements were in a horizontal crack.  The speculation is that the rigid stem of the UL's contributed to the failure.

I don't own any ULs and have never placed any.  Are the stems substantially more rigid than the C4s, such that you would be worried about a horizontal placement? Aren't the UL stems just dyneema covered in plastic?

The trigger wire looks bent also, is that why the lobe is stuck in retracted position? Plus, the damage to only 1 lobe for sure means placement was bad. Multiple lobes would be deformed if it was the gear itself failing, not poor placement