UKC

These things look like the DB's but my friend says not. Discuss

http://www.ukclimbing.com/gear/news.php?id=721

In reply to smithers25:
Well, it's a link cam, which Camalot's/ other BD cams aren't...

In reply to smithers25:

They have a very large range, which is good, but sometimes they suddenly fail, which is bad.

To clarify, they aren't badly made or anything, they just need more care than ususal. Most cams are pretty robust, and can be placed badly without causing problems. Link cams are not. They must be placed in line with the direction of force expected in a fall. If they aren't, they may twist and break up.

From the makers website:
Be sure to anticipate direction of load, should you fall or weight the cam. This is particularly important with Link Cams, due to their unique construction. Since they are built using trisected cam lobes, Link Cams can become damaged and the placement may fail if a load is placed that makes the cam "shift" when a climber falls onto it (emphasis in original)

Failures (turned up by google, not read in detail, but so you know it's not just me):
http://www.rockclimbing.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=2500303
http://cascadeclimbers.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/897524/OP_Link_cam_f...
http://www.mountainproject.com/v/omega-pacific-link-cams/107576613


On balance, I decided not to buy any.

In reply to smithers25:
Very poor customer service, very weak release wires, catastrophic failure prone if placed wrongly. on the other hand, for long easy mountain routes they are handy with 2 cams taking the place of 5 normal cams. But you MUST know the limitations and how to place them correctly though.

In reply to smithers25: Well I got excellent customer service from them. First rate indeed!
They are nothing like BD cams....
Like anything learn how to use it. I love em!

In reply to smithers25:

DBs means dogs bollocks guys, not a typo of BD.

In reply to smithers25: I've seen more jammed link cams around the place in Europe than all the other sorts put together.

In reply to Muel:

My bad!!

In reply to smithers25:

Expensive, heavy, specialised, (slightly) fragile. They're good for what they are, if you want something with a very wide range either for super-quick placement or because you only want to carry a few pieces of gear. But not a substitute for general purpose cams for normal use.

There's no such thing as a free lunch.

In reply to smithers25:

In my opinion they are quite specialist gear not so useful in normal cragging. Would prefer Dragons or BD camalots over these any time. Link cams are heavy and suprisingly clumsy to use. One friend of mine has few of them and first thing I noticed was that all the weight was shifted to the head, making it feel unbalanced in hand thus clumsy to use. I'd be my worst nightmare to be forced to use these while pumped on hard trad routes. Normal cams feel much more bomber and are more useful than such over engineered specialist gear in my opinion.

In reply to blanchie14c:

Its all very well 2 of them taking the place of 5 cams, what if you need to place 5 cams?

In reply to Vince McNally:

Yes, but surely people don't carry them so they can take less cams, they carry the same amount of cams but have more options.

I carry 1 on my rack, for me its the emerency cam that saves me working out wich of my DMM 4CU's will fit. Slightly clumbsy to use but i still carry it for that getting pumped emergency placement.

Thank you all. Your input has been most useful in my decision making.

In reply to smithers25:

I don't think they're worth having. Maybe for a beginner who can't choose the right cam size, but no, not good there either because of their propensity to snap in non-optimal placements. You can't use them in horizontal cracks and you can't place them in vertical cracks if some feature of the crack prevents them from rotating all the way in the direction of load---those are the some of the known situations in which they're likely to break. Locally flared placements are suspect too.

The idea that they cover three cam sizes sounds good until you realize that you also lose three cam sizes, two of which are not in use, every time you place one.

All that and they're heavy too.

In reply to Vince McNally:

To be fair if you are on a route that is likely to need 5 cams then link cams are probably not a suitable subsitute.
After many emails to Omega concerning the failed release wires from myself and others, nobody even got a reply. After one of the stress failures a thread with photos appeared and a rep from Omega posted on it that if anyone was having issues they should email him directly. We did and still didn't get a reply! This lead to having to find the answer myself so I've a solution for broken wires if anyone is suffering them, such is the nature of the design makes the strimmer wire fix a non starter. email me for details if needed.