You had the opportunity to absolutely crush BD in the bigger sizes and you squandered it. Everyone who has ever endeavored to climb a wide crack has been complaining about the 4,5,6 vs old 3.5, 4, 4.5, 5 sizing change since it happened.

Finally, price. Yes Dragons will be more expensive than Camelots in the US.

Cheers
Chris Rowlands
Brand Manager DMM

I actually don't believe I am being overly harsh.

Everyone who has ever endeavored to climb a wide crack has been complaining about the 4,5,6 vs old 3.5, 4, 4.5, 5 sizing change since it happened.

I have a question...
What cam Iam I looking at here is the picture
These cams have the thumb loop.


This img is off the DMM site, link called enter the dragon.

I would buy these cams here.
I got rid of my 2nd gen BD c4 because I do not like the stud at the end of the wire, I like the thumb loop.
Why have you at DMM not manufacturec these?

And as far as the salemanship on Hot Forged cams. I see no particular advantage. Cold forging, when done right to the right alloy would yield better traits to the lobes, without heat treating to make it just so. The information needed to asses if they indeed do any good by hot forging is most likely proprietary, and not attainable by just asking.

This is not the only industry I see this marketing strategy, looking for unsuspecting marks, to attain profits, rather than really reengineering and improving something. You know, make a better mousetrap, not another angle to stay in the game and bolster profits. I believe I see the latter.

It is funny how just the highlights are touted as better, but the details are clear as mud. Alloy, heat treating, surface hardness, spring tension, trigger action in the hand, etc. Instead, lighter, best camming angle, two axle, extendable.... blah, blah blah. If you invented the wheel, yay. If you made a wheel, well, so does everyone else. Hell, they couldn't even dream up a thumb loop, instead opted to eliminate it to save weight, you know, so they can say it is lighter than........ Function doesn't appear to be the engineering motive from where I sit.

Bob

I understand that. Don't be an idiot.

C4's aren't exploding out of cracks, the bodies aren't piling up. So don't act like they've solved a problem.

Oh, that's why my C4s always fail when I fall on them or use them as a component in an anchor. I just thought that I sucked at placing them.

Its funny that people fault DMM for a low cam angle but I never see Metolius faulted for its EVEN lower cam angle.

Not poking; just would like to see references/links on this as I don't recall hearing about this in the past couple years.

Yeah Aric, you shouldn't poke! I've been feisty with my forum arguments of late.

Cams slipping out of cracks is not a completely uncommon occurance. However naturally, proving that it was due to slick rock and large camming angles as opposed to bad placement is next to impossible.

And like I said it depends very much on the rock you are climbing. Hard smooth sandstone/quartzite, is much less grippy for large cams than course granite. I haven't climbed in the UK but I figure there is a reason why they prefer the smaller angles too.

A quick digging turns up a few threads.
http://www.rockclimbing.com/...0rock%20cam;#1641870
http://www.rockclimbing.com/...0rock%20cam;#1611560
http://www.chockstone.org/...&MessageID=11854
http://www.chockstone.org/...&MessageID=11763

No conclusive evidence though. In fact in one thread it was me suggesting that it could be the cam angle! Hardly an unbiased sample. I have also read one reported incident of a cam catching a fall and then skating out of the slick crack afterwards which the climber watched on. This suggests that the cam must have been at the very tipping point of the holding friction.

Either way I'm sticking with my C4s they are great cams. But I am mindful of the fact that they may not be the best choice if the crack looks slicker than usual.

I think the double axle design will reign as king for a while, it gives great range without all the drawbacks of other fancy designs. That said double axle is next to useless in sizes over #4 C4.

Just want to say that while I think that the dragon cams missed an opportunity here, in general, I love DMM's gear. I use at least one DMM product nearly every day I climb.

Hence asking so politely!

Thanks Patto. For some reason I thought you were talking about the slippage being due to the dual axle design as opposed to holding power of the larger cam angle. No idea how that idea got into my head...

Nah, double axles has always been a marketing ploy that just adds weight. In terms of usable size range in the most commonly placed cams, the supposed increase is so small it rarely matters. Notice that the charts always tout the full expansion of cams even though you can't use 40% of that range. Most of the C4 functional range comes from the lax cam angles, not the double axle.

Camalot and C3 sling design
The previous generation of BD Camalots had a cast stainless steel tailpiece. There was a nice big surface area with a smooth radius. The webbing went through this and was sewn in a single loop. When we redesigned the Camalots in 2004 we wanted to make them lighter and also allow more surgically precise when placing. Hence was born the current thumb loop. One of the challenges came when adding the sling to the mix. The deformation of the thumb loop under load is significant. I dug up the following photos from when we were developing the new Camalots.
[Camalot thumb loop under load.]


Just sewing a loop of 11/16” SuperTape (as was used before) didn’t get us to where we wanted to be strength-wise. Why? Because when the Camalot was loaded during testing, the cable pinches down, and ultimately cut the webbing at loads less than we were happy with (gunnin’ for 14 kN but only getting about 10 kN). Same with similar-width Spectra.
[During ultimate testing, the cable pinches and cuts a single layer of webbing (Spectra in this case).]


We also noticed that during drop testing, the cabled thumb loop would get tweaked under standard Indian Creek whipper-type loads. And no one wants to throw down significant dough on a brand new cam only to have the thumb loop formed into a “V” after just a few lobbers.

So we determined that having the double layer of webbing was substantial enough to get us the strength we were after, didn’t cut the webbing and produced less tweakability (engineering term) of the thumb loop.
[A double layer Camalot sling doesn’t cut under ultimate strength testing.]

And for those wondering, yes, we also experimented with the extendable sling design and found that when the sling is extended the cams not only failed at lower loads, but the thumb loop was damaged more easily.
[Tweaked vs. non-tweaked thumb loop after similar falls (loads).]

Basically, in all cases the perceived benefits were outweighed by our strength and durability requirements, therefore we went with the sling configuration you see on the current Black Diamond Camalot line.

And as far as the salemanship on Hot Forged cams. I see no particular advantage. Cold forging, when done right to the right alloy would yield better traits to the lobes, without heat treating to make it just so. The information needed to asses if they indeed do any good by hot forging is most likely proprietary, and not attainable by just asking.