UKC

Learn about the performance advantages of stainless steel and how we have used it in the constuction of our crampons from Bill Belcourt, Black Diamond's Climbing Hardgoods Manager. Stainless steel is used in Black Diamond's Fall 2009 Cyborg, Sabretooth and Serac crampons.

Read more at http://www.ukclimbing.com/gear/news.php?id=2223

In reply to UKC Gear: Grivel seem to disagree: http://www.grivel.com/acciaio/stainless_steel_vs_chromolly_steel.pdf

Not knowing much about metallurgy I'd be interested to hear an impartial viewpoint on both sides of the discussion.

In reply to UKC Gear:

Marketting Hokum

SS has no advantage over CM steel other than looking nice and shiny in the shop.

In reply to UKC Gear:

I liked the bit with the laser cutting. No idea weather SS is any better mind.

In reply to UKC Gear:

they seem to make a point of saying stainless is lighter - so why is the entire range of black diamond crampons similar weight or heavier than the equivalent in the grivel range?

sounds like a load of marketing bs to me

In reply to crabduck:
I second that, have we got any materials scientists/engineers on UKC to shed light on any real benefits of Stainless crampons?

In reply to gethin_allen:

I have a 20yr old £rd class honours in metallurgy if that's any help (had a v.good time at uni). It is nothing too technical, tbh the grivel site explains it very well. BD crampons are stainless to attract the must buy shiny things crowd (the americans?)

In reply to gethin_allen:

Horse is a metallurgist, I believe.

In reply to 3leggeddog:
I had read the grivel site but without other knowledge I wouldn't know who was telling the truth. I've already got 2 sets of crampons that barely ever get used so I can't see myself being drawn in to spending >£100 on a new pair no matter how shiny they are, even if this does relegate me to forever languishing in the world of punterdom.

In reply to UKC Gear: having seen the state of my rusty camp poons in the alps after 3 days use I was wondering why they are not made out of a rust proof material.

Questions I'm asking myself now are;

How well do these hold their sharpness?
How often do they need sharpening in comparison to chromoly?
Will they go the way of the lightweight alloy crampons which end up as stumps after a few encounters with rock?
Does the metal bend easily? (like the frontpoints on my camp ice riders on which which one now elegantly points up and the other down and thats not from any seriously technical terrain)

In reply to Gaz lord:

Thats interesting - my Charly Poser non-stainess crampons don't seem to rust, I thought that was pretty surprising.

The cheap and nasty ones I had before did rust though...

In reply to gethin_allen:

Shiny Crampons wont get you out of punterdom, climbing does that. I nearly p*ssed myself at the green argument what with the plastic bails, straps and anti ball plates then the shipping, travel to advertise etc.

SS Crampons will work just as well as CM steel, like I posted earlier, shiny things.....

In reply to petellis: yeah they were pretty cheap but they were the best fitting for the boots that fitted my feet best

In reply to petellis:

Any rust on ChromeMoly steel crampons is purely cosmetic dont worry

In reply to UKC Gear:
In relation to weight SS is weaker than cromolly!!!

This means that an SS crampon inevitably will be heavier than a cromolly crampon (of the same basic design) to have the same strength.
OR
The SS crampon will be weaker but weigh the same.
BUT
If you like the bling-bling...

In reply to 3leggeddog:

No, that didn't worry me, it was the fact that they snapped that did!

In reply to rogersavery:


He said it was lighter "by design". As others have said Cr-Mo steel will be stronger for a given weight. I can see no performance advantages in using this material.

In reply to gethin_allen:
I am as unbiased as your likely to get, I don´t have any ice climbing gear and don´t want any!
But I know loads about stainless and more than enough about chrome moly to give an opinion but it´s hard to give one at all when the manufacturers don´t tell us what they are using!

However note this is one company (Grivel) trying to rubbish at least two other companies products. We don´t know what BD are using for their crampons (well I don´t because my sound card is duff so if he said so anywhere in the video then tell me) but we do know what CAMP use for their crampons and ice tools, this is definately stainless steel and without a shadow of a doubt superior to the grades of chrome-moly used in the industry.

This is CAMP´s take on rubbishing Grivel!

Properties of traditional NI CR MO STEEL | Sandvik Nanoflex® is STRONGER | Sandvik Nanoflex® is HARDER | Sandvik Nanoflex® is STAINLESS | Sandvik Nanoflex® - MIRACLE METAL | Vector Nanotech | XLC Nanotech | Corsa Nanotech

The links are on their websites as well as the text in full, its too much for a cut and paste.
Personally I can´t see one of the biggest players in the business moving to an inferior product after making their reputation with high quality chrome molybdenum steel products, they aren´t that stupid!

Jim

In reply to Rob Naylor:

Indeed but I am probably not going to be much use on this one for the simple reason BD don't say what the stainless steel is, either generically or specifically. The closest one can get to is on some comments on the BD site:

http://www.blackdiamondequipment.com/en-us/blog/index/view/slug/upgrade-to-...

In which the the BD Crew say "We use a heat-treatable stainless in our crampons for excellent durability" which doesn't really help at all given there are hundreds of different steels that could fit the bill.

The Grivel stuff is a mixture of convenient, but misleading half truth, and knocking copy.

My best guess is that BD use some sort of precipitation hardened martensitic steel (sounds impressive eh!)with an optimum heat treatment for the end product. If this is the case then it could well have very good strength (as in tensile strength), high wear resistance (hardness) and be reasonably tough. Much better than CrMo steel probably not but might simplify manufacturing and/or reduce cost.

I also suspect that by "strength" BD don't really mean the tensile or yield strength of the steel but the overall strength of the component (crampon).

In reply to Horse: I just love it when you talk metals Horse. Grrrrrr... Tiger.

In reply to TobyA:

Brace yourself, incoming.

The Sandvik steel is a bit of an odd one (it seems to be semi stable austenitic/martensitic steel) that can be heat treated to give useful properties. The advantage seems to be that it can be heat treated at relatively low temperatures, interesting stuff.

However, given it has high Nickel and Molybdenum content it isn't going to be cheap so they will have save some weight to make it commercially viable.

Like some one said earlier, BD must know what there doing when it comes to improving there range.
They must spend a lot of money on R&D surely a move forward.
Well at least its got you talking about them!

In reply to UKC Gear:


Strange all those benefits are showed from Euro prices, not from US prices.

Old Cyborgs, 200 USD, made in China, 147-155 Euros.

New SS Cyborgs, 200 USD, made in China, 190 Euros (I'm referring roughly to Chamonix prices)

The USD-Euro exchange rate is sensibly lower today than in winter 2006-2007 (1 USD=0.75 Euros in november 2006, 1 USD=0,66 Euros november 2009).