UKC

Black Diamond issue further information on their recent product recall, which includes: Easy Rider & Iron Cruiser Via Ferrata Lanyards, Index Ascenders, Camalots and Camalot Ultralights, Wiregate, Solid Gate, and Srewgate Carabiners, and 18mm Nylon Slings

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In reply to UKC Gear:

Um, that's a HUGE recall.

Might UKC make the post sticky for a while (a couple of weeks say), so people actually see it?

In reply to JJL:

I think the technical term is 'sticky the post' - 'make sticky' is something else entirely...

In reply to UKC Gear:

Looks like I was lucky to have purchased the higher quality Chinese made units

So much for the 'made in America' stamp of quality

In reply to UKC Gear:

Again?!

In reply to UKC Gear:

As said above - that is one major recall. I was out shopping on Sunday and saw the notice about a year's worth of Camalot's and boggled. And then saw the one about a year's worth of VF Lanyards. And thought 'this is serious!'.

Then turned the Camalot notice over and saw that it was backed with a recall notice about carabiners...!

Looking at the original UKC Gear post, however, it is immediately obvious that the issue with the screwgates is that someone in the factory forgot to fit the 'c' during manufacture.

In reply to UKC Gear:

Someone in Salt Lake City is currently attempting to manage a PR nightmare whilst another frantically works out the cost to the company. #liveclimbreturn

In reply to UKC Gear:

The missing -[link]


http://blackdiamondequipment.com/en_GB/recalls.html

In reply to UKC Gear:

Hmm... youtube.com/watch?v=kiByehsqYSA&

Sigma testing is great, but I would expect every piece manufactured to be visually quality inspected. Looking at the defects listed it would be very easy to pick up on slings that have only been masking taped ready for stitching or rivets that need the tails punching.

Camelots checked, I still rate them highly.

In reply to UKC Gear:

Look on the bright side, you get free replacement kit each year. Provided you survive of course.

In reply to KennyG:


That will be why it a 'comprehensive quality audit' rather than an 'urgent product recall', then?

In reply to Andy Say:


If you read the linked news item, they're different things.

In reply to Andy Say:

With the Camelots they just explain which bit you have to check (very easily), so if nothing wrong then no recall.

In reply to UKC Gear:

As depressing and worrying as this is, surely we as climbers should be visually inspecting our kit before use? Just the same as I double check my figure 8, and my belayers screwgate for the third time.

Either way, BD is undeniably quality kit when it works and I expect to see their value drop as their reputation is tarnished.
At the very least I foresee mega closeout deals on current BD kit that has been subject to recall.

In reply to Michael Gordon:

Does that mean that total punters like me are conducting their quality audit for them

In reply to Andy Say:

Exactly. Cheaper than them doing it before sending the products out for sale.

In reply to s kennedy:

Visual inspection isn't a catch all though. Even with very well trained personnel doing it, if a visually apparent indicator of an anomaly/recognised defect is present, the best you can really hope for is about 80% of those defects being noticed. I always thought that represented a negative view upon the average person's diligence but many studies show it to be the case.

It does vary somewhat in that studies show people are consistent in identifying the same defective unit over and again but strangely, exposing a different cohort of observers to the same sample and they might be consistent but with a different exact grouping of defects/defectives while still letting some through. Most often VI can be best used as a belt and braces part of checking that the other quality engineering is doing what it should. If samples of post production units are re subjected to a battery of tests, including visual inspection, then this can be useful in identifying where process control is lacking where it was thought it was soundly checked. This is often done in such a way that anything critical to the end use of the product will "belt stop" production or even lead to product recall as it shows a process is not in control and perhaps has not been in control after a root cause analysis takes place.

Much of manufacturing moved away from reliance on VI because of its inaccuracy and especially where introducing a process stage might in fact cause a defect (e.g. a part being removed for an inspection and then reassembling ) though this wouldn't really apply to climbing hardware. There is no reason not to have it as an additional inspection stage if there is no chance of a problem being created other than one of cost, in terms of both money and engineering resources. Given that it is so inaccurate and scores badly on "Detectability" when assessing the means of addressing all potential product and process defects it is usually the case that resources are better employed elsewhere in making a sounder product.

In reply to galpinos:


Be reasonable. They've made a mistake, and are sorting it out.

If a visual inspection is indeed deemed sufficient, then your own eyes are as good as anybody elses.

In reply to Rob Parsons:

Rob, one batch is an accident. Consistent qualiy issues across a range of safety equipment is criminal. The issue of duct tape spliced tape slings indicates a fundamental lack of procedural manufacture and quality controlls.

In reply to ultrabumbly:

I don't know why as a rule these are not camera inspected. Camera systems these days are so sophisticated that they could pick up a multitude of problems even as a belts and braces post assembly check. Of course it's not a catch all but there are ways in which you could check rivet presence, rivet form, rivet defects, cam lobe position, part presence, length of stem, sewing presence and dimension attributes, you know all the really safety critical stuff. And then individual proof loading which would have caught the riveting issue as the plates would have popped of the ends of the axles. This stuff SHOULD be happening as default and it isn't. BD are not the only ones for sure...

In reply to muppetfilter:

Yeah I agree. To me this points to a systematic failure across the Black Diamond manufacturering process not just one product line.

Personally I think they should be offering to take kit in for a free examination. It was bought in the knowledge that BD were competent with quality control which has now changed.

In reply to Hertz32:

>

Checking you've tied in correctly and are properly attached to anchors etc is a different issue entirely.

I doubt anyone goes through all their cams making sure they haven't fallen apart.

In reply to ultrabumbly:

So Machines 1 humans nill. surprising, and interesting.

In reply to Hertz32:

Every now and then I go through my gear and checking for sling abrasions, pull out kinks in wires, check that cams operate smoothly, etc. But this is wear and tear, I am not checking that a rivet is really a rivet!

In reply to beardy mike:


I'd imagine it has a lot to do with the small volume of products produced in identical configurations. Automated recognition can take some tuning over large samples of production to weed out both false positives and false negatives.

(I once worked on a system that was incorrectly selecting some parts that had been marked as duds from a silicon wafer for assembly even though the die had been marked from on wafer tests as being out of specification. It wasn't an end use issue as there were post assembly checks but it resulted in needless expense. It was made better by changing the lightbulbs in the area where the camera operated from one brand to another with supposedly the same characteristics. A room full of material scientists, engineers and physicists took 6 weeks to come up with changing a lightbulb).

Stuff like that only becomes viable in high volumes. Not only in terms of throwing money at it but you need significantly large sample sizes running through the process to establish any confidence in, and so worth of, the test.

In reply to ultrabumbly:

I can understand what you're saying is true if you are looking at very precisely controlled small items, but these aren't. Making the tooling to insert into the system and inspect a cam wouldn't exactly be rocket science. Yes getting lighting etc is important, but once you've got that sorted, inspecting to see whether stitching for example is there or not, or if its in the correct location and of the correct spread shouldn't be hard at all, especially if you tune your gear range to for example use a high contrast sewing thread. Again, looking to see if a rivet is there or not, is simply a case of using an area comparitor function - the axles are a very known size as are the rivet heads.

Personally having seen inside the industry my belief is that it has more to do with companies not placing enough (financial) value on quality in the first place, not fully understanding how to achieve the quality and then relaxing their grip on processes a little too much. This is to my mind a prime example of a company underestimating the complexity of a manufacturing system which is working, moving it away without taking with it the knowledge of that process and then assuming things are going fine when they aren't. To achieve 3 sigma quality they would have needed to start from the ground up, tuned their manufacturing until they were achieving the quality required and then letting statistical control play it's part. But from the outside it seems as though that hasn't happened and we're seeing the results...

In reply to UKC Gear:

I think the way this has been announced is pretty dodgy, they've added more stuff to the recall but they're announcing a "quality audit" that I suspect most people won't bother reading. If I wasn't sat in a hospital bed recovering from my latest injury I doubt I'd have clicked on it myself!

In reply to Andy Say:

Indeed. They should have called it recall. I have no trust in people making this kind of whitewash. The fact that a very limited number of items is effected is no excuse. Some defects are directly (without any other contributing factors) dangerous e.g., tape masking cuts on slings, and may result in fatality. The number of product lines included in recall shows that they have systemic problem.

In reply to PMG:

I think they are calling the recalls recalls, and the quality audit is something else and is overall across everything, so I don't think they are being misleading.

In reply to beardy mike:


Statistical control of the type you are commenting on is really only relevant where you have big numbers. Lets be serious here, we are talking low volumes.

Unfortunately I also doubt there is sufficent money in the business to even consider the type of processes you are suggesting.Basically they know its complex, but we are hardly talking of thousands of employees being involved.

In reply to neilh:

But my point is actually that 3 sigma has been taken and used as a marketing tool which is shouldn't be. It's a statistical means for assessing the likely failures in manufacturing system. Quite why that's being used as a means for describing how good a cam is is beyond me. Having been involved to a minor degree with WC's nut recall, I know the sort of numbers involved and I know that I could have produced a water tight production machine which would have inspected and ensured each piece leaving the factory was within certain parameters, as long as the machine was properly maintained for much much less than the recall cost. These are company endangering numbers which could be avoided.

Yes its retrospective to say this, but this industry relies far too heavily (within the safety critical areas) on manual assembly and human inspection of parts. Take for example a wire - you're manually threading, crimping (using a hydraulic press) a ferrule, grinding back the sharp edges on the ferrule, then installing a heat shrink wrap on the ferule with numbering etc, then sticking it in a bin and latterly proofloading them individually to a predetermined level. Rocks have been produced since what, the late seventies early eighties. Every company producing them does it the same way bar minor differences (the real exception being Metolius as the silver solder their wires). They are the highest margin, most bought piece of trad gear. The production system has not really changed in that time bar the fact that the numbers have increased dramatically since they began and it's unlikely to change in the near future. At some point you would think companies would cotton onto the fact that by investing in a machine to do this for them, they would save on labour, increase productivity, reduce waste and improve quality. Now apply that to cams which is a far more complex item.

In the case of nuts, they could be threading wire, cutting it to length thereby using wire off the reel rather than individually laser cut lengths which are far more expensive, threading the nuts, positioning the ferrules and feeding them using a bowl feeder, crimping the ferrule, monitoring the force used, monitoring the displacement of the crimp tooling, then proof loading it, all in one shot, laser marking the items individually and then installing heat shrink manually. There would be no chance that a piece would ever go without having been tested to at least a minimum level. I can understand with a company like WC which post the recall would most likely have been badly affected financially, that that is a bridge too far, but BD is a huge company with big resources and which uses its hardware as a way to give credibility to its other very profitable product lines. Without the hardware they become another clothing and ski company so its an important thing to get right.

In reply to neilh:

I get really cross with this attitude at work and I get even crosser when it relates to safety kit anywhere. It doesn't cost more to build quality in from the start. Let's say that again because it's fundamental "It doesn't cost more to build quality in from the start".

Consider the slings, what does it cost to insist that the tape supplier marks cut reels so that you know to look out for the cut? Or what does it cost to insist they use metalised joining tape and to install a metal detector in your final quality check? Well metalised joining tape probably adds a few pence per huge reel of tape - no big deal. A metal detector on the final inspection is a few hundred quid, maybe even a grand, but it's a one-off cost. Now consider the balancing costs, just the management of a product recall is massive and that's before you start replacing kit, and don't even think of the costs if someone should hurt themselves as a result of your corporate negligence. Quality saves money.

In reply to UKC Gear:

Thanks for sharing this.
Just checked the 4 sets of BD lanyards I purchased last autumn (Easy riders) and thankfully all are okay.

As they've already be used quite a few times it's a big relief all is well. But what are BD playing at sending out deadly (their words) kit? I paid top money for these thinking I was paying for high quality equipment. There are vf lanyards available at under half the price I shelled out for these.
This recall may well cost them plenty, but it won't be enough

In reply to A Mountain Journey:


What result would you like? The company to fold? Mass sackings? What?

In reply to beardy mike:

Your comment on investing in a machine to do this process is interesting. Clearly there are not "off the shelf" machines available and so you are looking at a one off design for that specific process.

I can imagine the discussion with a machine builder- so who is going to pay for the design and development costs.A circular discussion follows, gradually getting nowhere( it is after all a one off machine). Neither side will want to pay for the costs( or can afford to pay the costs). The net result is that the process developed back in the 70's and 80's is probably the only " cost effective " way wires can be manufactured (with the odd improvement like silver solder).

On the point about BD's costs. For all either of us know they probably buy product recall insurance. So it may not be such a big issue.

In reply to Rob Parsons:

As they have sold people life threatening equipment, something fairly strong. New processes put into place for sure and those responsible asked to leave yes.
There's often talk on here about why to use vf lanyards and never use static slings, and we know the reasons for this. The slings will fail if we fall. Now we're told the lanyards will too!!! Both brings the same result for the end user then.

In reply to A Mountain Journey:

I think you need to put into perspective how many units will be faulty. I don't know how many units a year BD sell of their VF kits. I'd imagine it's probably 10000 per annum. If their assertion that its a very small number of affected units is correct then the chance of failure of a kit is likely much lower than you falling and severely injuring yourself on a spike in the route. Yes it's not on, but I'm not sure "something strong" is that appropriate. Yes it should have happened.

In reply to neilh:

Of course there aren't off the shelf machines - this was something I looked at at the time of the recall as I helped them revamp a proofloader so they had a facility in the UK. What quashed it was simply being in a financially precarious position at that time and a perception by them that it would be a complex thing to run. But I put in a reasonable amount of thought into it and I know the sort of figure you'd need to achieve it and it's really not that high if you design carefully. As I say, much cheaper than a recall. And we're seeing the results of people simply not investing early enough to make it worth their while. For example I know a simple camera system can be purchased for in the region of 5-8k, that a hydraulic proofloading system can put together for maybe 7-10k and that the whole lot can be integrated for not much more. Then you just have to tool intelligently. This stuff isn't rocket science or unattainable. I know you're involved in machines too, don't know what sort, but bespoke machines is specifically what I do. Its very much freds in sheds but we can deliver very complex machines for not huge bucks. I guess the industry needs a shift in ideas because WC are certainly not the only company to think this way but as manufacturing begins to shift back from the far east (and I'm confident it will) they are going to need to think about how to approach this. The manufacturing skills in these companies have gone and market is now more commercial than ever and will demand better quality...

In reply to A mountain journey: - you really think they should be punished? Actively punished?

I agree very strongly with what's been earlier stated that quality will save them money. The cost of the recall is high, but managable and is likely budgeted for, but the damage to reputation can become a big problem, and the costs of a fatal accident would be enormous.

In reply to beardy mike:

My philosophy is different. I only do a modular build. I decline to do what I call " green cheese " machines.

I manufacture braiding machines-- yes those used for climbing ropes etc.

In reply to A Mountain Journey:

Given that it's pretty well known that Black Diamond arose from the ashes of Chouinard equipment (the 'c' in their logo is a legacy) who were put out of business by some pretty dodgy legal claims amongst other things they are going to be doubly twitchy I would have thought?

What I didn't know was that in 2010 Black Diamond Equipment was acquired for $90 million by Clarus Corporation which owns Armor Holdings, Inc., a military defence contractor.

In reply to A Mountain Journey:

Dear me, get realistic. Do you want to be able to buy climbing equipment. Sort of attitude means that nobody in their right mind would get involved, and then where would we be?

In reply to beardy mike:


Lies, damned lies and statistics. If a VF lanyard fails you don't just die a little bit; and lets face it a VF lanyard failure really is likely to be fatal. So whilst I appreciate that the chances of any one individual having bought a duff lanyard (or sling, or cam, or crab) are low the implications are dead high. Its a chance that you cant really factor in to risk assessment on the crag is it?

And I think there is a 'not' missing from your last sentence?

In reply to Andy Say:

I have just had a look at the recall on the 18mm nylon slings. Must admit to being stunned - masking tape! Good grief.

I am a bit less forgiving having read that.

In reply to neilh:


I've just realised that the only piece of Black Diamond kit I 'own' is a quickdraw with both crabs (found it on a crag in the Ariege - honest officer!). Could be a ticking time-bomb in my kit store. Better check.

In reply to andrewmcleod:

I have entered this forum because I am professionally interested in quality assurance. I learned that I had to check two Iron Cruiser kits I have bought in 2015. They are ok. The title of their press release is misleading: it does not include the most important information (dangerous product).

Of course I was not surprised. No manufacturer is advertising quality audits without reason. It was obvious that something went wrong. Nevertheless BD should have been more explicit.

In reply to beardy mike:

Mike, I hear what you're saying, but do have this in perspective.
Let's look at it another way:

If my unit was faulty and a fall occurs, the consequences are terminal. Regardless of the other 9999 units that are all fine, should mine be the 10000th i'm dead. I paid for the vf kit to help keep me alive, not kill me. Safety kit needs to be safe, not dangerous.

In reply to neilh:

I think it realistic to expect the kit we buy - and pay quite a lot of cash for - to do the job expected of it, yes.
Didn't BD move their production to China, maybe to reduce costs / increase profits? I feel cheated by BD for this lack of quality control (having bought a number of their expensive lanyards), this isn't a bit of stitching missing from a jumper, mistakes of this magnitude are very serious.

In reply to neilh:
"Statistical control of the type you are commenting on is really only relevant where you have big numbers. Lets be serious here, we are talking low volumes."

Why don't they test every item individually, preloading it with a fraction of its rated strength?

In reply to A Mountain Journey:

There is of course the wider issue of what we will pay for gear. If the price of say camelots doubled due to quality / safety . Would we pay for it?

£100 a cam - ?

Not sure.

Touchy subject .we probably do not want to pay the true cost and as consumers I suspect we would complain loudly.

In reply to PMG:
Cost?

In reply to neil


Maybe. If done manually...

In reply to A Mountain Journey:


Did you bother to read the 'article'?

In reply to Mr Lopez:

I did, although a few days ago and I had since overlooked parts of it. Thanks for the reminder.

In reply to PMG:

I doubt there is enough money generated from the sale of climbing hardware and also the willingness of us to pay the retail price for a perfect 100% safe system that includes embracing the latest manufacturing processes and quality/quality standards. And for that to be ongoing.

It's a niche product which will adapt and learn and in most cases get by safely most of the time. And part of that is that we will pay what most of us can afford.

We should look at it positively. There is a recall procedure in place and we know about it.

In reply to neilh:

I think that at the moment climbing gear is generally very safe. Hope it stays that way.

I guess manufacturers are neither big nor very profitable (e.g., see BD financial statements http://www.blackdiamond-inc.com ). The market seems fragmented and must be very competitive (am I right?). Given global reach of major players distribution and marketing are probably very expensive. Add ongoing trend to make everything lighter and you are likely to get problems.

In reply to A Mountain Journey:

I do agree with you - this shouldn't have happened. As I've pointed out elsewhere, you'd be pretty angry if VW failed to put brake fluid in your new car. As for proof loading, in my view all product bar stitched product should be tested if possible. Currently that's a really labour intensive thing (i.e. costly) to do as it's not done inline with a manufacturing process but is usually done separately. Instead 3 sigma manufacture is supposed to be a way of ensuring good items - but that requires tight control of each and every process and a real understanding of the minute differences a small change can make. Moving your whole production thousands of miles is a risky thing to do as you lose some of the knowledge you had. I totally get your anger towards them, but I'm still not sure that penalising them is a) possible b) rational or c) going to help. This recall has and continues to do their company a great disservice and I think it will take a long time for them to recover from that, both in terms of finance and reputation. To be fair to them they have highlighted an issue as soon as they could, then audited the rest of their processes to make sure it doesn't go any further. Still shouldn't have happened...

In reply to neilh:


If you're talking about VF kit, I think for BD that's pretty niche - interms of global market (and by that I mean the european market as that's really the only other significant market) VF kit is pretty much the biggest item on the market. And you are right that we don't pay for it what we should. If you compare what we pay for a jacket or a tent or dare I say it a pair of pedals for a bike, to a piece of kit which genuinely saves your life, it does not compare...