My name is Matt Maddaloni and I am currently immersed in the adventure of the Anticam. I would like you to join me as I share its design, function, development and future.

If you don't know what the Anticam is please visit
http://www.theseasontv.com
There are 5 free web TV episodes showing the beginning adventures of the Anticam. A climbing device that pinches rock instead of expanding between it. Watch episodes 1, 6, 9, 15, 21 and 22

Before I begin I'd like to explain why I am not patenting it. I work as a mechanical engineer and have patented several devices and systems under Ziptrek Ecotours. All have been rigging related and some are far more complicated than the Anticam. It is very expensive to patent something and to get a return for those dollars you need to have far more than a patent. High grade components, assembly, safety testing, manufacturing, distribution and retail are all expenses not included in the $20,000 it takes to patent in Canada. Every country beyond that would require another $20,000. How many Anticams would I need to sell to pay off the first bill...

Climbing is already a difficult business to be in so the chances of making enough money to warrant the time and expense necessary to patent a Anticam is just not worth it.

For the Anticam to have the best chance of success it should be an open source project. If solutions to its various problems are found here on this forum then maybe a company one day will make them available to the public.

So that's my goal:

Make the Anticam open source and develop it here so that one day we all can have and use them.

so it begins...

photo shows version 1 of the Anticam
mm

This is just another one of a million ideas I had years ago.

Not practical. The occasional aid on a flake and that's it. Not really worth carrying.

The 'idea' of the Anticam isn't new, many have thought about a pinching device. Cool. What stumped me for a very long time was two major issues.

1) How can you make it fit varying sized features
2) How can you place it with one hand

of course other problems like weight and strength also apply

Several years ago I wanted to climb the Guillotine Flake and it was obvious the Anticam was the way to go. Unfortunately I couldn't figure out the above issues.

Then about one year ago I thought about using a V shape with a bottom axle and a spreader bar. The Anticam could spread apart from one central axle. Then a bar could be popped into place and lock off the V from spreading farther. The cams on the end would take up any small adjustments from there. Voila! I had one of the problems solved.

Here is the 3D drawings of that first prototype. This was made in Autodesk Inventor

It takes imagination to find opportunities to do new things. I also think having great stoke and energy in life is a hard thing to find with so many stresses in our lives. Please do not wreck the stoke and post negative remarks on this thread. Thank you.

I think it would be more useful if you flipped the cams around and had a regular cam with a spreader bar.

[COmplete and utter trad n00b] Might I ask with the given flake picture: What is the problem with using a normal cam between the flake and the wall?

It's not million miles apart. It looks pretty solid.

Does it Flex somehow rendering a standard cam vulnerable to out poppage?

[/Noob endness]

I think somewhere he mentioned that it does in fact flex too much for the use of normal cams.

I think somewhere he mentioned that it does in fact flex too much for the use of normal cams.

I don't care if anyone else thinks the Anticam is useless, a waste of time or whatever... I'm highly motivated to see it develop. If your interested too then let's put our heads together. Otherwise I'm sure there are lots of forums and threads about stuff that might interest you more and if your writing here than your wasting your time right?

For those with constructive criticism thanks for your input, it's really fun sharing this adventure with you.

now back to business... I have googled and probed every possible previous invention and material handling device out there. I even used several types as a steel fabricator in my younger years. The point is there just wasn't any device that had the expansion range, one hand operation or was light weight enough to actually carry on a climb and if a easy modification existed I would of jumped on it right away. Why? Because the goal was to climb that pitch free.

As an inventor of rigging equipment I've come to realize that the best ideas are the most simple. When a simple idea is shown it seems completely obvious and people are always amazed that it had not been thought of before. But that's the crazy part, simple, well designed systems are the most difficult to invent and this whole process can be really frustrating.

Version 2 solved some significant problems and allowed me to climb a difficult pitch without too much effort spent on placing the gear. Considering this is it's first year of development and it's not a paid gig I'd say progress is being made...

In my next message I am going to show the tech drawings for version 2. What would be great is if anyone had insight into how to get around the need for the bar.

cheers
mm

Odd-leg calliper:

It seems to me that it might be better to try an odd-leg calliper design with one straight arm that goes behind the flake and one bent arm that allows for some range. The symmetric design you just posted looks like it could leverage out on the flake if set wrong especially if the gap behind the flake is relatively small.

Odd-leg calliper:
[image]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/83/OddlegCalipers.jpg/800px-OddlegCalipers.jpg[/image]

WHAT ARE BOLTS DOING NEXT TO THAT PERFECTLY SOLID TUFA???!!!!

Ha! That was exactly what I was thinking. Finally limestone is "safe" for trad.

Finally, an answer for the Mass tufa porblem!

So when they get mass produced do you think I'll get a tufa the price of one discount?

lol if you were anywhere on that wall and that flake ever broke off the anti-cam would be the last of your worries. that is a huge flake. youd be dead with or without an anticam hanging from it.

But isn't that the danger of this product? As the OP states, it's used to protect features that flex, that are inherently unstable. So it seems dangerous to invent "protection" that attaches you to the unstable feature.

Don't get me wrong, I applaud the OP - both for his climbing vision and his engineering prowess - and I enjoyed The Season. But given the vast number of lines I'd love to climb in my life, I can't see why I need to add this to my bag of tricks.

You could make an anticam for ice. Just put something like these on instead of the cams:



To help protect ice pillars and daggers

[image]http://www.climbing.com/news/hotflashes/Norway-41--143klein.jpg[/image]

Today I redpointed the Guillotine Flake!!!

I had to climb 15 feet out horizontally from the last Anticam to where the flake became thick enough to hold a regular cam. Pumped out with new route wall grit under my feet, it was terrifying to get that cam in. There isn't a single foot hold until near the very end. Fifteen feet out from those Anticams put everything into perspective. I wasn't scared of that flake anymore, I finally had confidence in the anitcams, everything came together. I clipped that cam and knew I had it in the bag... 30 feet of underclinging later I just made it to the no hands rest and it was over. One year of dreaming, designing, training, preparation and stress. And it's done. WHAT AN ADVENTURE!!!!



and ya, you can actually watch the video tomorrow at http://www.arcteryx.com Bryan Smith with http://reelwaterproduction.com is busting out the editing tonight!

There are plenty of features out there, especially in granite, which flex enough to make cams useless, but that are nowhere near detaching.

I'm asking out of sheer ignorance of the physics so if you say I'm wrong I'll buy it, but if a flake would become dangerous if you placed a regular cam behind it, wouldn't it still be dangerous if you fell on it while being protected by an anti-cam? It seems like the first is passive and the second is dynamic and therefore generating more force or is it simply a matter of leverage (insert Johnny Depp joke here).?

When they were hammering bongs into the Split Pillar on the Grand Wall the pins at the bottom started falling out so they popped in a bolt. That flake could flex enough that the full range of the cam could tip out and just pull right out. The rock is also much stronger under tension, like pulling with the anticam, than under sheer, such as pushing out on it with a cam. I agree that being anchored to the flake with an anticam should it go would be deadly but I think that is incredibly unlikely.

Just wondering, why do you use such small lobes with such small range?
I considered this design before, and realized, if you use really large lobes, and use the the full logrithmic spiral then you could get much much more range.

Today I redpointed the Guillotine Flake!!!

I had to climb 15 feet out horizontally from the last Anticam to where the flake became thick enough to hold a regular cam. Pumped out with new route wall grit under my feet, it was terrifying to get that cam in. There isn't a single foot hold until near the very end. Fifteen feet out from those Anticams put everything into perspective. I wasn't scared of that flake anymore, I finally had confidence in the anitcams, everything came together. I clipped that cam and knew I had it in the bag... 30 feet of underclinging later I just made it to the no hands rest and it was over. One year of dreaming, designing, training, preparation and stress. And it's done. WHAT AN ADVENTURE!!!!



and ya, you can actually watch the video tomorrow at http://www.arcteryx.com Bryan Smith with http://reelwaterproduction.com is busting out the editing tonight!

If webbing or rope is used there will be some small amount of stretch which will cause the cams on the rock to rotate until the stretch comes out. Not good! A wire cable could work better but it will be more difficult to bite into it with a cam.

and if a large impact fall force occurs you will never be able to create enough force on the cam to undo it. This is like hanging on a carabiner and tightening its lock screw and then unweighting it and trying to unscrew the lock... jammed!

but that said I still think it is worth trying your idea, maybe I can get around some of the points I talked about. I added your drawing to the forum, hope you don't mind. If you do I can take it off.

If you would like to see the Guillotine Flake getting an ascent (this week) with the Anticam check out
http://arcteryx.com
it will not be on The Seasons web site for another week.
mm

Here is a drawing by Andrew showing his 3:1 pulley idea. Thanks bro
mm

And what I'm getting at is that none of them will work as is for climbing.

I'm surprised you're not more enthusiastic about this given the homebrew cam competitions. How many of those have outdone what is already commercially available?

I had this design made a year go but the cable part on yours comes with bigger problem which i do not think you have figured out.

Right, not enough red arrows. Thanks, I'll get right on fixing that.

I watched the last one but want to see it in action - do any of the videos show falls on one?

It seems to me that it might be better to try an odd-leg calliper design with one straight arm that goes behind the flake and one bent arm that allows for some range. The symmetric design you just posted looks like it could leverage out on the flake if set wrong especially if the gap behind the flake is relatively small.

Odd-leg calliper:

I don't care if anyone else thinks the Anticam is useless, a waste of time or whatever... I'm highly motivated to see it develop. If your interested too then let's put our heads together. Otherwise I'm sure there are lots of forums and threads about stuff that might interest you more and if your writing here than your wasting your time right?

For those with constructive criticism thanks for your input, it's really fun sharing this adventure with you.

now back to business... I have googled and probed every possible previous invention and material handling device out there. I even used several types as a steel fabricator in my younger years. The point is there just wasn't any device that had the expansion range, one hand operation or was light weight enough to actually carry on a climb and if a easy modification existed I would of jumped on it right away. Why? Because the goal was to climb that pitch free.

As an inventor of rigging equipment I've come to realize that the best ideas are the most simple. When a simple idea is shown it seems completely obvious and people are always amazed that it had not been thought of before. But that's the crazy part, simple, well designed systems are the most difficult to invent and this whole process can be really frustrating.

Version 2 solved some significant problems and allowed me to climb a difficult pitch without too much effort spent on placing the gear. Considering this is it's first year of development and it's not a paid gig I'd say progress is being made...

In my next message I am going to show the tech drawings for version 2. What would be great is if anyone had insight into how to get around the need for the bar.

cheers
mm

Seriously? Pointing out that what he's working on is commercially available gets 1 star?

The easiest thing to do would probably be buying a couple sets of Kant Twist clamps and throw a loop of cord around the center axles. They're lighter than vertical lift clamps and have more range, so probably a better choice. Heck, you could even drill out the pins on the end of the jaws and replace the copper pads with log spiral cam lobes fairly easily.