Petzl Ice Tool Failures (Current Generation Quark, Nomic, and Ergonomic)

Artem Vee wrote:

I do find it telling that the respondents that I personally know are professional engineers - are so far not psyched at all on this failure mode, whereas the climbers that I personally know are not professional engineers - appear to make up the group of people that think this is all over-blown (via their anecdotal experiences with the tool). If you're an astute reader that is just tuning in and trying to make sense of this thread, I would keep that in mind.

Hahaha, probably true.

I used to be an actual engineer, but now am just a SW/Computer Vision/AI dweeb.

What you are stating may be being discussed at Petzl and they may be making materials changes?

Artem Vee wrote:

Also, it's interesting to see the difference in community opinion between MountainProject vs UkClimbing.com - where the current gen nomics have been universally getting flamed and dunked on, whereas here those opinions seem to be drowned out by a strong contingent of people who seem content with the quality of the current nomic.

Could you point out the thread where the Nomics are getting dunked on? I just want to read it and get their perspective. 

The thread about Nomics and Ergonomics failing literally only has 4 voices in it and the discussion is essentially only between two people. There's not much to that thread.

Artem Vee wrote:
I do find it telling that the respondents that I personally know are professional engineers - are so far not psyched at all on this failure mode, whereas the climbers that I personally know are not professional engineers - appear to make up the group of people that think this is all over-blown (via their anecdotal experiences with the tool). If you're an astute reader that is just tuning in and trying to make sense of this thread, I would keep that in mind.

I don’t align with Christian’s rhetoric lol. fwiw I’ve worked as a mechanical engineer, auto mechanic, have degrees in electrical engineering and math, and currently work in software.

I don’t think the failures are great of course, but I am still climbing on my nomics. I do now look at how beat up they are with a different eye, and am considering new tools next season, whether its the new bds or dmms. That said, if I dont like either of those tools I would just buy a new set of nomics.

So yeah of course it’s concerning but there’s many risks and probabilities to balance and it still certainly seems pretty low probability to me.

edit to add:

I worked with data in one form or another since 2017, and if I had a dollar for every time the following conversation played out:

Junior engineer: the data is/says xyz

Me: are you sure? Did you check it?

JE: yes (not as confidently)

Me: you actually manually verified that?

JE: no

Me: can you manually verify that is true?

JE verifies and finds its not true

Every damn time. So with that in mind, unless Petzl releases data and as others have pointed out, this thread has run its course for me. Carry on and have fun :)

John Sigmonwrote:

I don’t align with Christian’s rhetoric lol. 

Would more data make my rhetoric more compelling? Or would you prefer to use Petzl’s obscured data? I say don’t be a data point and buy a different tool.

I would donate money to a Go Fund me page to buy a few brand new Nomics/Ergos and have How Not To Highline pull that joint to failure.  It would also be cool if they (or anybody else) could cut the handle in sections to see how it's made.  

Anybody want to set it up?  Anybody have a connection with How Not Too?  What would it take for them to test some tools?  How many tools would we need to buy  to make it at least somewhat meaningfull?

If people think it could work, I'm happy to set up the Go Fund Me with a 50 dollars donation.  I've never used the Go Fund Me, and I'm based in Europe, so I may not be the best person, but I'll try if people want to.  

This would be a cool instance of the internet driving some experimentation. 

Let's do it.

Bruno Schullwrote:

I would donate money to a Go Fund me page to buy a few brand new Nomics/Ergos and have How Not To Highline pull that joint to failure.  It would also be cool if they (or anybody else) could cut the handle in sections to see how it's made.  

Anybody want to set it up?  Anybody have a connection with How Not Too?  What would it take for them to test some tools?  How many tools would we need to buy  to make it at least somewhat meaningfull?

If people think it could work, I'm happy to set up the Go Fund Me with a 50 dollars donation.  I've never used the Go Fund Me, and I'm based in Europe, so I may not be the best person, but I'll try if people want to.  

This would be a cool instance of the internet driving some experimentation. 

Let's do it.

I would be up for that.

I assume the failure is fatigue related, so just pull testing a new nomic might not be a good way to replicate the failures.

I don't know Eli.  There's been lots of talk about fatigue, but it could be many things.  

Perhaps on some production runs there's some space or gaps in the interface?  Perhaps the rivets are slighly too small or too large?  Perhaps the plastics aren't consistent, or some of the metal parts have poor quality or finish?  Mayve the glues or solvents or whatever in some cases interaced poorly with the materials.  Maybe temperatures changes are effecting things, as with the older head issue, which they solved by adding a plastic insert to allow the parts to expand/contract slightly.  As an aside, I think the plastic head inserts probably would not have been needed if the shaft and head had a higher level of finish and quality control...the plastic insert allowed it all to operate with more more toleance for variability.

Anyway, I don't think we can just say, "It's a fatigue issue."

All kinds of different tests, including cyclis fatigue testing, would be great. 

But getting some pull strength tests would be a great start.

It would be useful to see up close some of the broken handles, especially looking up close at the aluminum. A quick search seems to indicate that someone (a materials expert) looking carefully at the cracked surface could tell if the crack was initiated by fatigue or not. 

The UIAA has a pull test, and a tool must meet a direct 2kN load, if you pull a nomic apart and it is stronger than 2kN (almost certainly is) you wouldn't be proving much. Petzl's own literature says the cutouts on the handle are rated at 4kN, with the hand rest rated at 1.5kN. Even if the tool breaks at 2.1kN, it would be certifiable by the UIAA for climbing. 

However, there is no UIAA test for cyclical loading.

I think a cyclic load test would at least give us some sense of how durable the tool will be. The question would be how heavy of a load (0.75 kN? 0.5kN?) This is where it starts to get subjective quickly.

David Riouxwrote:

But material is not just the only criteria. Engineering can certainly make different materials viable in axes. Selection of alloy and design of the components. Also different materials contribute to different characteristics

[..]
Let’s not forget design and consumer request.

Climbers are seeking lighter tools and different functions characteristics every few years and expectations keep expanding. Make tool as light as possible while meeting certain functional characteristics and dependability might be present in the majority of numbers with few unexpected failures.

I completely agree with you on that. It's entirely possible to design an aluminum tool with reasonable life expectancy or construct an unusable carbon tool. Aluminum just makes it very hard to design a strong, reliable, light tool that doesn't suck all the heat from your hands. 

For some unknown reason someone mentioned planes earlier in this thread - plane parts are subjected to a very predictable stress pattern with very few cycles, which makes aluminum a more suitable material for planes than for ice tools. Cost of steel that has the same strength to weight ratio as aluminum is also not necessarily lower. 

Ice tools are loaded in many different ways that the UIAA standard doesn't cover. To answer someone else's claim that no one makes 10^6 moves on a single tool - that's true, but 1/ one move one ice can cause multiple cycles 2/ mean stress, not only the # of cycles, matters. If for example a part is designed with marginal lateral strength (there are no UIAA tests for lateral strength of handles and lateral strength of the shaft needs only to be 18kg at 33cm from the pick) then the mean stress of real life cycles can be too close to the UTS. 

I heard BD tests fatigue of their handles and IIRC they try to ensure the handle can last 50k cycles of 100kg loading and unloading. With a tubular design it's easy to believe that would translate to similar numbers for lateral stress, but with a plate embedded in plastic there's no reason to think that.

A long time ago I heard from an experienced soloer that he always brings new tools, picks and crampons and front points. For most climbers this is not necessary but the idea of having a reliable pair of low-stress tools and another pair of high stress training tools is very common. 

JJwrote:

For some unknown reason someone mentioned planes earlier in this thread - plane parts are subjected to a very predictable stress pattern with very few cycles, which makes aluminum a more suitable material for planes than for ice tools. Cost of steel that has the same strength to weight ratio as aluminum is also not necessarily lower.

I was replying to your post which suggested that aluminum is a poor choice because of strength to weight ratio.  I mentioned planes because they are famously weight sensitive, and yet made from aluminum.  It was a snarky comment that the weight to tensile strength numbers you posted aren't tell the whole story about how materials are selected in the real world.  For example, once stiffness is a factor (it usually is), aluminum structures are regularly lighter than steel ones for the same stiffness.

Ice tools are loaded in many different ways that the UIAA standard doesn't cover. To answer someone else's claim that no one makes 10^6 moves on a single tool - that's true, but 1/ one move one ice can cause multiple cycles 2/ mean stress, not only the # of cycles, matters. If for example a part is designed with marginal lateral strength (there are no UIAA tests for lateral strength of handles and lateral strength of the shaft needs only to be 18kg at 33cm from the pick) then the mean stress of real life cycles can be too close to the UTS. 

Totally agree, and this is a great point.  I think I'd take this a step further into a few key takeaways:

1. If this is the case (lateral strength too close to UTS), that represents a design issue, not an inherent issue with aluminum specifically.
2. Given this possibility, and the rough estimated life of the failed tools, we should stop focusing on high cycle material behavior (e.g. the lack of infinite fatgure life beyond 10^6 cycles for aluminum).  There's no evidence this is to blame for these failures.

There's just a whole lot of conjecture in this thread and very little facts.  We know a few Nomics have failed, and for some people that is troubling.  We don't really know the mechanism of failure, the number of cycles at the time of failure, etc., so all the commentary related to those things is kinda putting the cart before the horse.

If Petzl had expanded their serialization beyond just the professional PPE items we’d  (they’d) have a better/quicker chance of driving down to root cause.  Could just be that Pierre is better on the mill than Alain and you want ones made by Pierre, or a bad batch of raw material from a vendor, or even worse, there’s always the dreaded aluminum micro-fracture.  We may never know.  Design flaw affecting all,  or manufacturing flaw limited to certain ones ?  

But it’s ironic that I could have followed some advice here and killed myself, lol…..by retiring my trusty 1st Gen Nomics cuz they’re old for some new ones.  It’s like trying to run and dodge machine gun fire that isn’t even being aimed.  By trying to avoid one bullet, you run into another.  Might as well just calmly walk straight ahead, and pray Morphos aren’t the next failure topic right after I cancel my daughters’ college plans so I can get a pair   

Here’s the UIAA ice tool standard, and yeah, it seems like a pretty low bar to clear: https://www.theuiaa.org/documents/safety-standards/Pictorial_UIAA152%20Ice%20Tools.pdf 

Maybe we need a spec beyond B and T for intensive mixed climbing.

Mark Pilatewrote:

 pray Morphos aren’t the next failure topic right after I cancel my daughters’ college plans so I can get a pair   

Wow! You’re quite brave   

Karl Henizewrote:

I can begrudingly tolerate the low-strength (1.5 kN) pommel design, wobbly heads, or even fatigue cracks that can be detected by die penetrant inspection...

Fatigue crack inspections are the common method for preventing potential catastrophic fatigue failures.  These fatigue problems are not approached from the perspective of "acceptable failure rates", but rather a perspective of "when / how should fatigue cracks be detected / sized through inspection to prevent castastophic failures from occuring".

Karl, I mostly agree with your assessment, but I don't think that inspecting cracks is a viable procedure for production ice tools.  We're climbers, not highly trained aircraft mechanics, so I don't think it would be reasonable (or responsible) to expect consumers using these products to be doing fatigue crack inspections.

Again, I agree with your general assessment that this is a potential problem and that people have a right to be concerned.  I just don't think that a crack inspection plan is feasible or viable for this type of product, and I don't think it's the right expectation or path to go down here.

Artem Vee wrote:

The BD Hydras appear to also have a non-plastic handle - i.e. it’s milled aluminum - and those are also cheaper than the morphos. 

Nobody here can even provide a close-up of the break point on a Nomic, never mind a schematic diagram, yet you know all about how the BD tool - that hasn't even hit the market yet - is put together?

My mental math: $600 (set of Nomics) times 2 is greater than $1000 (set of DMM Cortex or BD Hydra) times 1. Which is a conservative estimate imo, because I could see a fully milled aluminum tool like the cortex safely lasting 3 times+ longer than a nomic.  

And you know the retail price of two new tools that haven't hit the market yet?  Where are you getting these numbers?

When we look at weight, the cortex is only 4 grams heavier, and the Hydra is ~40 grams heavier, so the weight advantage of the nomic is hardly a big one compared to those more sturdy tools. 

Again, where are you getting this?  We all know the Hydra is coming, but it doesn't even exist in the BD catalog yet.  And it's pretty bold to proclaim the Hydra as "more sturdy" than anything, given that not a single one has been sold yet.

So far, this thread contains a crap load of assumptions and speculation, none of which have been confirmed by any reliable source (tools are failing by the dozens, the handles are plastic, the handles are aluminum, failures are caused by material fatigue, failed tools were new, failed tools were old and abused, graphite tools won't break, Petzl is hiding a known design flaw, etc., etc. Some of those things may well be true, but without some facts we're all just screaming into the abyss here.

Enough uninformed speculation, for crap's sake.  Either start a class action or shut up and climb!

Oh, and anybody too spooked to keep climbing on their Ergos or Nomics can send them to me for disposal (PM for shipping details).

FWIW, BD Fuels use a once piece hydroformed aluminum shaft/grip and are only 53g and $15 more than nomics. 

Grant Watsonwrote:

And you know the retail price of two new tools that haven't hit the market yet?  Where are you getting these numbers?

I can confirm Cortex is 1K for a set, from reps and it may have been posted on some Euro site already? No clue on the Hydra, I'll be bummed if it is in fact the same cost.

Pat Marrinanwrote:

I can confirm Cortex is 1K for a set, from reps and it may have been posted on some Euro site already? No clue on the Hydra, I'll be bummed if it is in fact the same cost.

The Hydra will not be 1K for a set. 

Double Jwrote:

The Hydra will not be 1K for a set. 

Maybe if you buy in sets of 4.  His and hers?