Beal Birdie Recall-Worthy Safety Issue?

Hi all,

I've noticed fractures in the central pin in 2 Beal Birdie's, 2 months of light use and 5 months of moderate use old, respectively. Neither have been dropped. I've contacted Beal about this and am waiting to hear back. Please inspect your devices!

i checked on mine with similar times/amount of use and all the metal looks good still. hopefully they'll send out a replacement, and this isn't a common issue!

chris bwrote:

i checked on mine with similar times/amount of use and all the metal looks good still. hopefully they'll send out a replacement, and this isn't a common issue!

Hi Chris, Im wondering if our devices were from a bad batch. How old is your device, and have you caught repeated lead falls with it?

Nolan Yahok wrote:

My opinion is that these are from the manufacturing process. Can you get to a store and see a new/unused device?

Opinion based on...?  I can confirm that in both devices the fractures developed during use.

Thanks Nolan, very interesting. Unfortunately, I don't have an unused photo. I feel the process you describe could explain my device (first picture), but on my friend's device (a few months older, second picture), the cracks look a bit more worrisome. I'm curious to hear what Beal has to say about this. I'm under the impression that if the head of the flattened stud did pop off, the cam could come off with it.

I would agree other posters that what you are looking at is probably a result of the manufacturing forming of that part and not a stress crack.  I would guess that the "cracks" were originally there, but now they are filled with a little dirt and that highlights them.

I looked at mine (6mo old, limited use) and it has something similar. I’m with the others who think it’s just the nature of metal being deformed in manufacturing. 

Mike wrote:

Looks pretty common for heading steel that's decently hard. If you think of how the device is loaded it would be unlikely to make cracks in that orientation from use. The deformed portion of the pin only appears to act like a cotter pin, so the device is locked together, and shouldn't expect take a large load. 

I would not personally be concerned, but it's your device. 

I'm usually pretty willing to look past small manufacturing defects on most pieces of gear and say ehh fuck it. However with a belay device being a single point of failure, even if it's a superficial issue, I think beal should correct it. I would say definitely send it back to beal, they should be made aware of this issue if they don't already know.

I just checked mine. It has no visible deformation or cracking.

Damn it, mine too! What a bummer.

Mine has no visible signs, but also has a small amount of use to date.

I haven't checked mine (not readily at hand at the moment). However as others have said it wouldn't be an issue to me. The end of the axle is burnished so that be the threaded nut won't come off. If burnished edge of the axle came off, the nut is still threaded on the axle. If just put a drop of Loctite on it.

SICgripswrote:

I haven't checked mine (not readily at hand at the moment). However as others have said it wouldn't be an issue to me. The end of the axle is burnished so that be the threaded nut won't come off. If Al the burnished rolled over metal came off, the nut is still threaded on the axle. If just put a deep of Loctite on it.

That makes sense to me. Are you referring to the area surrounding the end of the axel (almost looks like a split washer to me) as the threaded nut? If so, how do you know that's a threaded nut? After reinspecting my device, there aren't any visible threads, but that doesn't mean they're not in there covered up.

I think on mine I can see the beginnings of the threads but I'll have to check when I get a chance. At one point I was actually going to try and remove the burnishing so that I could unscrew and take the nut off (to remove the cam spring, but that's another story)

Those cracks look pretty serious.  Good that I didn't buy one in the spring.  I have NO interest in putting my life on the line over a $50-$75 piece of gear with obvious defects.

Imagine if Black Diamond had issues like that on the ends of the camalot axles.  No way Jose

Looks like and issue with the peening of the rivet.

Probably done with an orbital and something out of spec.

google orbital peening

Peening

Evan Erwinwrote: I'm usually pretty willing to look past small manufacturing defects on most pieces of gear and say ehh fuck it. However with a belay device being a single point of failure, even if it's a superficial issue, I think beal should correct it. I would say definitely send it back to beal, they should be made aware of this issue if they don't already know.

Whoa, I would hold your horses on the shipping, send a picture to Beal and wait for feedback.

My hunch is that this is an artifact of the manufacturing process and not a defect. 

X2 on the above post. The ring/ rivet was spun too fast, if the metal was hardened, it lost its temper from being over heated, or maybe bad metal to begin with.  The closeup appears to show the ring separated at about the 8 o’clock position.

Response from Beal in the pdf below. Anyone have opinions on their test procedure?

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1AsOJsNxyOW1KNjayvz5s-uYZiM2tMShQ/view?usp=sharing

I think that climbers are overly paranoid and slightly ridiculous, that's not bearing load. The shaft portion of the rivet sees shear, the formed head (part that you see cracks on) is doing nothing other than retaining the solid shank rivet in place. It's not going to fail. Yer not gunna die.

Jon.Rwrote:

Response from Beal in the pdf below. Anyone have opinions on their test procedure?

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1AsOJsNxyOW1KNjayvz5s-uYZiM2tMShQ/view?usp=sharing

Opinion: I think Beal is a great company and if they're willing to stake the future of their company on saying it's fine, i believe them and will be using my Birdie tomorrow without concern.

Has Beal answered on this yet? Just checked mine and I've got similar cracking on the pin head.