Gumball Quickdraws

Saw this on kickstarter, the gumball clip. Personally I think this solves a nonexistent problem, but it'll be interesting to see what everyone thinks.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gumballclip/the-gumball-clip

From their site:

"Quality Equipment, Safer Climbing

The Gumball Clip's unique ball and curved gate are designed to make clipping in natural and reduce the risks of lead climbing. Click the button below to view videos highlighting our product features."

I think that caribiner is made out of plastic.

Oh man, that price point...

Looks like it would readily allow the rope to unclip itself in any sort of weird fall scenario (and especially if you make the mistake of back clipping).

I think some gyms would like it because it will make it easier for their customers,  but it seems like a crutch more than a design improvement.  If it's taking you 10 seconds to clip a regular draw, then you shouldn't be leading yet.  That's ridiculously slow and is not due to any aspect of the carabiners design but rather your poor clipping technique.  Better to take some time ine day and practice clipping and then you won't be relying on any one carabiner to be able to make a clip.  Besides, most of the gyms I've been to use Petzl spirits, which are ridiculously easy to clip.

Rebrand: The Gumby Clip. (Too obvious...)

Equipment is responsible for whippers. Atleast they found their target market.

"Failing to clip in while lead climbing is dangerous, frustrating, and stresses equipment. Taking falls or "whippers" can leave you fatigued or injured, and equipment is often responsible for these falls."

I'm familiar with blaming injuries on protection failures that were user error, but blaming a fall on a biner is a new one.

Pretty sure MadRock already beat them to this idea....

Andrewww wrote:

Pretty sure MadRock already beat them to this idea....

And the Mad Rock design looks like it would prevent un-clipping during a fall. The gumball design seems prone to unclipping during a lead fall.

Maybe the gumball biner can reduce the incidence of forearms being impaled on biners.

Nice smooth rope radius they got there   

• Wow... can't imagine this taking much traction.  I agree with whoever said it looks like it might make it easier for the rope to unclip itself. How bout that gate connection? - looks extremely flimsy. 

The mad rock design is a lot better than the kickstater but I do the idea would make it easier for some to clip, depending on how they clip. I often let the weight of the rope pull the gate open but this can be a hassle if not clipping at or above chest level. If the nose of the biner, however, directs the rope down towards the gate, I would imagine it would alleviate some of these hassles. For other people who clip differently I would imagine it would be worthless and potentially worse than a standard carabiner design. For me, it's not worth the weight, money, and possibly potential hazards, especially considering I'm not in the market for some new draws. 

I had the exact same thought, solves a problem that doesn't exits.  If you can't clip a normal draw then you shouldn't even be leading. 

Their website states that they are UIAA and CE certified, yet when you search the UIAA approved database their company isn't listed at all (under the name AnchorLabs) and no iteration of "gumball clip" returns anything under searching for a product.  But how they would even have UIAA certification yet is also confusing as they haven't manufactured their final product yet. (Directly forging the shape vs CNC machining from a block of Al can give significantly different metallurgical properties including strength if the direct forging is not done correctly including any required post forging heat treatment).  Maybe they are kosher with UIAA/CE and the site just hasn't been update since but it doesn't look like they are kosher.

I'm all for entrepreneurs getting after it whether or not the internet thinks its a good idea but you have to do things the right way.

I hope its case of they just didn't know and they need to go do their research, but falsely advertise about meeting safety standards when selling a product where major injury can happen is sketchy at best.

The ball part looks fine to me but the rope bearing portion of that biner looks awful.

Not a climbing gear engineer, but the structural proportions seem all off. I have some doubt that there was any sort of analysis (FEA or hand calcs) behind the design. Also, $10k to get into preliminary production and certified seems overly optimistic. I bet $10k would not even cover your forging tooling development and procurement costs let alone CE testing.

Interesting nose idea, but none of the other design/manufacturing elements seem to have been thought through other than sketching up some CAD and "saying" it looks good.

Kyle Tarry wrote:

To me, this is by far the sketchiest part.  I think the idea is silly and I wouldn't buy one, but whatever, if people think it's cool, no big deal.

However, carabiner testing and safety is serious business, and there is no evidence that these things have been properly designed or tested.  Their statement that the design is "CE certified and each one is physically tested for strength and safety metrics during production" seems dangerously misleading.

Judging by the initial vs final design, it looks like some class project that they decided would make a good product. I'm with someone above in that it $10k seems optimistic for tooling/forging development costs.

I'm just going to put gumballs over the ends of my existing carabiners. Cheaper AND emergency food. 

This is an April Fools gag...right??