I probably shouldn't make this video
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- Äas pĆidĂĄn 14. 02. 2023
- Petzl has SOME holes in their Sm'D and Spirt carabiners so can you drill holes in yours to save weight? Elliott Bernhagen / anikulapu sent me a few carabiners with a LOT of holes in them to see if they were super good enough.
The blog has our data at www.hownot2.com/post/carabine...
Alpine Savvy's article about using Sm'D carabiners www.alpinesavvy.com/blog/petz...
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Good God, love your work. I won't jump with the lightest, high-speed, rig for a reason. Jumped, and other stuff, in the military ... so I accept a certain amount of risk. Why push for minute advantages. Too many other things to worry about.
Anyone who thinks they can just start modifying engineered safety equipment on a whim is fast tracking themselves for a Darwin Award
Part of the reason is that it actually adds a lot of manufacturing effort to save a very small amount of weight
Iâm mean as long as you donât fall haha
I remember black taping anything on my rack if you dropped it on the rocks or shock loaded it, this is crazy.
is the background on these carabiners that the guy was climbing on these? I don't think I caught that. I don't think it's justified still, but maybe they were just racking carabiners? But if that's the case I have other questions about how this guy was shaving weight on his rack.
If you know what you are doing I see no Problem with modifying, but if you know what you are doing you would not drill holes in carabiners
There is a huge difference between the guy designing the carabiner carefully removing material in CAD while running FEA and then having a lab verify the design strength of the final product and Bubba drilling random holes in his basement with a hand-held drill while assuring himself 'It I'll be fine."
Not to mention the quality control... you're drilling random holes in a carabiner! Even if you're OK with 12 kN. No matter how neat you make them look there's no guarantee that one of them won't fail at like 5kN and insta kill you because you happened to randomly drill a little bit differently.
I completely agree. The notion that drilling holes can make something stronger (after a lot of engineering using FEA and other techniques) is well known. For example, a bridge in Milwaukee, WI gave indications of grave structural issues, and the solution was to cut large holes in the structural members to better distribute stress. So the idea of less material is more strength is well understood, but only after a hell of a lot of engineering and testing of hole placement, etc.
Not to mention drilling produces heat and may change the temper of the metal around the holes. So not only is there less metal where you need it, but the metal that remains may be more brittle.
@@angryginger791 youre not wrong but drilling isn't drilling, you can do a lot to avoid heating up, also more concerning would be microscopic cracks they are the reason drilling in the aviation industry is a hole sience for itself but if you know what your doing and you have access to the right Equipment it is possible to get reliable results
ââââ@@victor-charlesscafati I'll just note that, strictly speaking, removing material always makes an object more compliant. Meaning that removing material will always make it deform more under stress. For something like a carabiner, in application you want it to act as much like a rigid body as possible, and removing material will make it less rigid. In the case of a bridge, you might not want certain parts of it to be as rigid, which is why you might want to add holes. This could avoid a possibility of something like a catastrophic failure in an overloaded beam by instead weakening the beam so it can deform enough for the load to be partially transferred to a network of other beams rather than catastrophically failing before deforming enough to reach that point.
As an aerospace engineer: Holes at the correct position and shape save weight, holes at the wrong position and shape will kill you. To determine the correct spot is very complex. The results would probably be more extreme when the carabiner is bent over an edge or any other non optimal condition that occurs under real conditions.
I was also wondering what happens if the carabiner isn't being stressed in the optimal position. I bet them holes would make it a lot worse.
Agree, with similar credentials. Most of the strength comes from the flanges in normal use, so removing material from the web should be fine to an extent (carabiners have an almost I-beam section so I am using I-beam terms) but I would be wary of stress concentrations being exacerbated in the curves, or, like you said, nonstandard loading scenarios. Definitely something to consult FEA about... but then again, this is life-saving equipment that has been carefully engineered for light weight already.
@@lukejohnston5566 Note they lost 50% or more of strength. Note also they failed in the tension area. Note the direction of the failure. The unit stress went up more than double into the flanges after cutting the webs. I bet the originals were failing at the bends. He should have blown some of the undrilled to for comparoson
@@vibratingstring removing material always removes some strength. It's a balance of loading requirements and safety factors vs. weight and portability. Notably, the carabiner manufacturer has already done that math!
I used to design carabiners and sales wanted us to make one skeletonized. It took one test to show it was a terrible idea and would not actually save any weight
Haha - when the marketing dude sits in on the meeting and thinks he's generating good ideas... have had literally the same conversation...
Could you make the web wider to make it work? I get that it would probably end up weighing more but as long as it wasnât ridiculous then people would still buy it because it looks cool.
@@ebouwman034 Yes, but because holes create stress concentrations, you'd actually have to add more material back than you took out by adding the hole if you don't want to lose strength. Modern carabiners are already pretty close to optimal so there aren't any places you can poke a hole in one without causing a problem. The Petzl design got around this by adding the holes near the nose of the carabiner where stresses are lower anyway. They could have just made the nose thinner and saved more weight than they did with the holes.
â@@ebouwman034 consider a square cross section rod of material that gets bent. You have a bunch of compression at the inside and a bunch of tension at the outside of the bend. The middle bit basically just keeps them apart. You COULD drill some holes in the middle, but you could also remove material at the side of the middle and end up with an i-beam shape, which is what you see on these carabiners.
(Just to make this clear i am not a mechanical engineer, so if someone finds a mistake please correct me here)
Did you try topology optimization?
That's a surprisingly large difference. But I completely agree with you, even if it were safe, the savings are just so laughable there's simply no point.
Maybe he climbs for Formula one, we don't know.
That and surely you will be reducing their longevity as well
@@jasonpressler7111 If he did, he'd have a team of competent engineers to minimize the weight of components properly while maintaining their structural integrity.
How is it a surprisingly large difference? The dude has basically completely trashed his gear...
â@@beardymike77yea, didn't surprise me much.. this is like the backpacking guys who cut the handles off their utensils and toothbrush. Except it's potentially lethal..
Dude that unzipped spine is just about the coolest thing that could have happened đ
If you don't use any carabiners you can save even more weight! I just free solo onsight everything.
But this got me thinking, maybe I can save a few grams if I start drilling hole on myself đ€
just amputate both legs and campus everything. 'UGE weight savings!!!
Just do it naked. Makes it easier to use the bathroom mid route too
Don't christians have a guy who did that?
Saves weight on harness rope and pro⊠saves money on future meals
Nice knowing Ya
As a mechanical engineering student who is in the process of taking Stress Analysis, this was by far your most interesting video to me.
the CAMP Photon tearing open like a zipper was EXACTLY what I expected, since the point of the center thin section of an I-beam (the cross section of the carabiner) bears the transverse shear, not the weight of the load.
As an engineer myself also, I knew that, but was surprised it knocked so much strength off. I would not drill holes in carabiners myself, although I do drill holes in other stuff all the time. Carabiners are already optimised, why would you do that, knowing the rating is gone after even one hole?
It does demonstrate just how useful the shear web is
@@deltalima6703 Same, I assumed it would be a smaller loss of strength. Clearly they're already forging these things to nearly-perfect stress distribution.
@@deltalima6703 A good way to think about it is to imagine a carabiner as a funky shaped wire and then imagine how its load bearing capacity overall is going to go into the gutter if there's any part where the cross sectional area is reduced, in this case SEVERELY. Ironically, lining up a centered hole drilled down the length of the carabiner from end to end (making the cross section kindof like a pipe) would probably be stronger than coming in from the side for your holes, at least for the amount of volume and thus weight you're saving.
I would like to see a strain simulation. I bet there are a couple of safe places to put holes in, but that is making assumptions about proper use. Overall though, there isn't enough material to be looking at carabiners as a source of weight reduction.
Does he also take a few stitches out of his harness too? :O
If you cut your belay loop in half you could probably save a few grams
@@Jefferson-ly5qe who needs a belay loop, youre not tying in the belay loop with a rope anyways
If you take the core out of your rope that would save a lot of weight too!
@@Matt_of_the_mountains dyneema is strong, instead of using s rope you could take a single tiny strang of dyneema
He probably climbs in one made for a continuous 1in webbing. Belay loops and padding weigh too much.
Speaking of safety, you should really build a plexiglass box to contain your shrapnel.
if for no other reason than being able to find the shrapnel...
We used to go to Conterra factory to destroy our old rescue equipment and they had a mesh cage..... I was surprised he had nothing.
Polycarbonate (Lexan), not plexiglass, aka acrylic.
@@PaulSteMarie yeah but we know what they mean
It makes sense that the ones with more holes, but smaller diameter holes will break at a higher force than the ones with large holes and fewer of them. It looks like larger holes actual cut into the âload bearingâ portion of the spine and reduced its overall cross section, that becomes a stress-riser and it snaps there.
If youâre that concerned for weight I think you could just use the bathroom and instantly lose some weight
If I was climbing with that Nineteen G with the holes in, I think I would be using the bathroom
Ha ha, "I feel about four pounds lighter!"
Well, for that weigh difference you don't need to go to the bathroom, it's enough to spit.
No one needs intestines during rock climbing. Leave them at home!! Also only one kidney is really necessary for short lengths of time, just make sure to alternate which one you take out to avoid overstressing one.
The whole spine is "load bearing". In order to resist the bending moment of the offset load (since a biner is loaded next to the spine, not along it), there is a shear force in the middle of the spine and a tension/compression balance on the edges of the spine. That's why one of the biners zippered open along the holes - it failed in the shear zone.
Tip: If you cut all the straps of your harness in two (along the long side), you can get two harnesses for the price of one. And they even weigh less. Plus: free flying lessons.
Never mess with climbing equipment other than giving it stupid names!
I used to work in a bike shop and it was always hilarious to me the dumb shit gram shavers (usually triathletes) would want us to do, I'll never forget this guy who easily had 75lbs he could lose and him wanting us to drill holes in his low end (105) cranks. People are stupid.
One of those "Lycra Sausages"
The thing with holes is that they look like you are removing a significant amount of weight, but in reality it is usually laughably little. Aluminum is only 2.7g/cm^3, it takes a lot of pretty big holes to save even 30 grams, the equivalent of one splash of water
Hey... 105 is not low end... it is decidedly middle of the road, tyvm.
@@frankprendergast3577 agree, but in shops we get DI2 as on regular customers soooo...
@@frankprendergast3577 haha, my snobbery is showing, you are right it's definitely not low end. It is low end for a gram shaving weenie tho.
Main issue is that the holes are drilled after forging, any hole in any part is a stress riser, and parts will usually break close to them. You could use CAD software to model where the stresses are and create a carabiner full of holes if you wanted to, but it would be a lot more expensive to manufacture due to tooling complexity.
I'm not sure about that personally. There really isn't much you can remove from a carabiner spine. Forging will only do so much, all you're doing is aligning the grain structure which will add 1/3 to the strength with a strong tailwind. Holes in a safety critical structure like that is just a dumb idea. As for tooling, it's not going to add THAT much to the cost. I mean a forging tool for a biner out in Taiwan is what 3-4k USD. Even if it added 1k thats still going to be amortised pretty quickly over the space of 20000 carabiners...
That has been done and tested by dozen of different companies. These are as close to perfect as materials and tec allow any weight reduction attempt is just an additional breaking point.
The stress test are paid for in sales once you complete the test that's it unless a new alloy pops up its not a matter of cost its just reality.
I'm an engineer, so I'd love to see some discussion in these videos of exactly what makes it break sooner whenever you test weird gear. The answer here is stress concentrations! A hole isn't just removing material that could be supporting the force, it's actually increasing the force around the edge of the hole! So if you take a 4kn whip on a biner with a hole in the middle, that area of the biner around the whole is actually seeing much higher than 4kn. The reason Petzl can put those holes is because they're in not in the primary load-bearing portion of the biner along the spine, so the stress there is lower anyway and concentrating it isn't an issue. But as other comments mentioned, some team of engineers did a TON of modeling and simulation to make sure that would be okay, and probably made some tiny unnoticeable tweaks to the hole geometry to spread that concentration out a bit.
Only reason I could see myself doing such a 'job' on my carabiner would be to mark it permanently end of life, and not for climbing. Makes it easily identifiable if one happened to get put back into my access kit "accidentally" by the missus to claim on life insurance đ.
Good point! Old/bad carabiners can still be handy around the house, but you don't want anyone to mistake them as valid safety equipment.
Yeah I keep an old well used carabiner next to the toilet. When things get rough in there I'll grab it and click the gate a bunch. It puts me in the sufferfest mindset and helps me through the pain.
@@michaelbarker6460 may I suggest more water and fiber?
@@ttonAb2 Or hot sauce.
I thought drilling holes in my carabiners would make me lighter and faster, but all I got was a weaker setup and a sense of shame. I guess I'll stick to cutting my hair and trimming my nails to save weight instead.
If you lose enough weight from yourself and your gear you don't need your carabiners to be so strong, right?
I seriously lost more weight from my haircut this morning than weight drilled from those biners.
Climb naked and waxed all over.
Slapping your belly was the most poignant comment in this whole video. No point in shaving weight off your gear if you refuse to shave it off your beer gut ;)
Aye, just half a % of body fat will make a vastly greater difference than this. Hell, just shaving off your hair would probably be more effective.
holy crap, that is taking drillium to a whole new level
@@piisfun damn you're right
The thing I found most interesting was the "old style" gold carabiner. As it was being pulled you could see an inward bending moment that stretched and broke the thinned inside surface. Once that failed the force moved to the outside and stretched and snapped that. When being held up next to the blue carabiner, it has a small curve built in that would counter those forces and we don't see it fail in the same area.
I always thought the curve was just to make it "less" likely to hang funny and cross load, but it seems there might be a legit structural benefit to normal placement as well.
just imagine the middle part as an hinge. For the blue one, the joint is in line with the force/rope. For the yellow one it isn't and would rotate a bit -> bending force os higher
If there was any free weight to shave off without compromising strength a lot the manufacturers would have done it. They actually have done it which is why we are where we are right now.
I disagree with this. If that was the case, every carabiner would weight basically the same. It's always a balancing act between cost of manufacture and how much more you could sell a slightly lighter carabiner for. If it costs 10% more to manufacture, but people aren't willing to spent 10% more, it's better to stick with the super good enough design.
Not saying drilling holes is a good idea of course, but I think some holes in certain spots on certain models could be done without compromising breaking strength at all.
@@bradley3549 None of that meant anything. Think then try to make a point next time in a way that even if you are wrong humans can at least understand what you are trying to say. (BTW, you are wrong)
@@paulmartin2348 Just because you couldn't understand, doesn't mean I was wrong. Bottom line, a lighter carabiner can be built. It's not cost effective to do so. Explain to me how I'm wrong in that assertion?
That is just bat-&^%$ crazy! Drilling holes in biners?? WHY?? Let's be sensible now, the heaviest item on a climber's rack is the rope. We need testing of holes drilled in ropes, you could drill literally hundreds, maybe thousands of holes in one of those suckers, that's where you'll get the real benefits
@@piisfun depending on the rope, the core is 60% or more of the weight of the rope, that exactly where the holes need to go!
If you take the core out, itâs approximately the same strength reduction as these carabiners but you save 50% of the weight not 5% haha.
Narrowing the spine is a weight loss method, which is why they ship with that distinctive I-beam shape. Really, if there are any weight-loss things to be had, it would be because itâs too expensive and timely to mass manufacture at their price point.
I'm guessing the strength loss is larger than the weight loss percentage-wise, otherwise they'd just do that and make everything a bit thicker
It is. And by a lot. Even with the holes properly added whilst forging the carabiners instead of some random doing it at home.
If you want to save weight when designing equipment holes are never good. They decrease the structural integrity too much.
@@Daemonioros It depends on the material and application.Holes made using a dimple die are perfectly fine for sheet metal for exemple.
The weight has already been removed. That's why it is I shaped in cross section on many newer carabiners. Holes create stress points, which it appears is fine in some areas close to the gate, but not in other areas. I suspect that is due to the outside and inside edge both being in tension during use in those areas, so not bending.
Massively so!
Well, to be fair, this depends A LOT on exactly where the holes are placed. A stress analysis would probably show that there are many places where you could drill or press a hole (probably with heat treatment afterwards) where the hole wouldn't affect the overall strength at all (because there's a more stressed part somewhere else)
Also, to be fair, there's absolutely no reason what-so-ever to do this.. really.. saving a gram is like sweating a few drops less đ€Ł
Yes, but with a weight savings of: negligible. So still don't. But I agree that following a stress analysis to see how you could maximize holes while minimizing strength loss would be fun for science, just not fun for practical use.
@@error.418 I don't have stress analysis software, but a cross-over video with some geek who does might be fun. Compare stree predicted failure of things with real-life tests.
Removing material in a well designed component usually means removing safety factor. I agree with a bad design, there is opportunity to remove mass without impacting ultimate or fatique strength, because it's a bad design with too much material in certain areas that only adds mass and does not add strength.
Drilling holes also creates sharp corners which are stress risers, so then will these be chamfered followed by a vibratory polishing process, then shot peened, with a final polish to remove microcracks.
Fortunately Ryan has shared biner MBS across many brands and designs and they're usually on par or slightly above. Consider if these are well designed carabiners, removing material would only reduce MBS.
I expect with the amount of engineering that's gone into carabiners over the decades they're pretty well optimised by now. The time to change the shape would be in the design phase and they've done that and shaved almost every fraction of a gram while reliably meeting the MBS.
They want to sell gear, light weight is a selling point.
I expect you would also find that putting a hole in a less stressed part would have a significant effect. It will all be under quite a lot of stress but some of it (e.g. the spine) needs to be under less stress to function: if the spine is weakened it will bend and stretch more, putting more force on the nose (obviously I can't say for sure, more to illustrate the point that the shape of one part can affect when another part breaks).
For reference on how bad this is to do, an open hole like that has a stress concentration factor of about 3-3.5 while most filleted curves like the carabiner has by design would be somewhere around 1.3-2. In some of those curved areas you actually get compound effects from both when you add the hole.
If holes are too close together youâd also overlap the concentration from multiple holes and risk âunzippingâ, like one did in the video. Typically you want to maintain a separation of several times the diameter of the holes when adding holes by design.
NEVER drill holes in your safety gear, or anything you are unwilling to break.
Real Titan Sub energy on these carabineer mods
As a climber that also partakes in ultralight backpacking/thruhiking... this video is pure gold.
seconded. The difference with UL backpackers and this guy is that we are actually successful at shaving weight. And general UL tactics don't result in death like this carabiner shenanigan might. The worst UL backpacking gets is a lot of cold soaking.
@@nateblakely4674 somewhat disagree⊠there is a level of UL that is stupid and dangerous depending on the situation. I remember a kid on the PCT in 2019 with a 6lb base weight that had no insulation layer with the motto of âjust hike fasterâ. Dumped snow on us in the desert that year and I remember seeing him swearing his ass off on Baden Powell during a below freezing morning. Last time I saw him on trail, Iâm sure shaving 8oz on a fleece was so worth itâŠ
@@rookiemoves yeah that sounds like no fun. UL can get deadly but it takes a lot of stupidity. Different then this case where the guy thinks he's a genius for saving weight on carabiners until he falls
@@nateblakely4674 how short do you cut your toothbrush?
@@vibratingstring my toothbrush length is T-1cm, where T= your toothbrush length
The only circumstance where I would do this would be for aesthetic reasons on a keychain carabiner. Speaking of which I think I'm gonna go skeletonize all my keys now.
Just don't break them when you turn the lock too hard xD
This could actually be a cool way to "mark" old carabiners that should not be used for climbing anymore but is good enough for other things.
"What could possibly go wrong" !!! Thanks for testing Ryan!!!
This is a great way to never have to worry about added weight ever again.
A message to all of you who are still incredibly obsessed with saving weight-- just cut half of one finger off. I know a guy who did that and he managed to finally send his mega-proj
Next theyâll try this strategy with their ropeđđđ
They have done this with rope by "pulling strands out of the core" - hence the rise of sub-11mm ropes as single-rated. The smallest single-rated climbing rope I've noticed is 8.7mm, a seeming thread compared to the 11mm ropes I started climbing and vertical caving with in the mid-'70s.
@@kayzinti4452
You ought to check out canyoneering ropes. A 9.5mm is considered huge. The 8mm range is now common. Of course ascending is not frequent as in caving. Only caved once several years ago. Really liked it
Definitely loved you showing that a foot or so of webbing saved more than 2 compromised carabiners. There are places that itâs fine to shave weight, safety gear isnât one of them.
This is a great idea! I'm drilling mine out right now. I'm going to weave and wrap paracord through and around the holes.
Wow⊠the days we used to drill our big hexes to lower weight⊠still have some pre internet, photocopies of plans to lay over each side of the hex and drill⊠must try to dig those out
As for the title of the video and the name of this channel: yes, you absolutely should!
HowNOT2 save weight.
As someone else already commented: Death by modified safety gear definitely qualifies for a Darwin Award.
not a climber. never searched climbing gear. somehow this channel was algorithmed to me. AND I LOVE IT! as someone who has a Mechanical engineering background, i love seeing the destructive testing methods
I actually watched the entire "pop corners" ad. That's how they should be made
So, when the "instructions" provided say not to do something, we should probably listen?
To appease the algorithm gods, my guess before the test:
I bet the holes reduce the strength by about 25%
A lot of the strength should be coming from the "top and bottom" of the "I" shape, but I do think the drilled out part provides rigidity and needs to be strong enough to help the perpendicular parts reinforce each other.
I was way low! Yikes. That biner with the holes so big they started cutting into the spine...I can't believe someone would think that's a good idea. Such a neat result though.
Totally agree with your reasoning here, drilling holes is a terrible idea. Even if the weight savings was worth it (it's not), it's just such a gamble. I bet if you tested a larger sample, you would see huge variance because the exact placement/size of the holes likely makes a big difference. And most people aren't materials/structural engineers and won't fully understand how the forces are working within a carabiner.
@@alexstarr1589 Think of the axis of bending, the part of the spine where he drilled holes is actually the tallest feature in the typical loading orientation and therefore provides the most resistance to the force attempting to pry open the carabiner. The "top and bottom" of the I-beam actually provide more lateral strength to resist sideways bending, as well as a larger rope-bearing surface. So for normal carabiner end-to-end loading, where the holes are drilled along the spine is the worst possible place to remove material. This guy might not be with us for much longer if he actually climbs on these drilled bois.
I liked your guess. :-/
Really well structured video! Thx!!
This reminded me how much I'd like to see a calculation of the cost and value of all the little metal staples in all the tea bags produced and disposed of globally every year.
I honestly didnât even think that somebody would do that đ€Ż
Yeah, I can't even fathom doing something like that. Heck, it would never even cross my mind!
Sometimes itâs fun to play around with gear. Nobody is saying theyâre using these in practice.
Ive seen a post about retexturing old cams, like filing material out to add more depth to the old grooves. I wonder if this too would have a drastic affect on the function of the cam
I think they tested some old cams. I think youâre right that itâs dangerous.
The hole-y Petzel at the end looks to have forged holes. Massively different than the drilled holes in terms of stress/strain and strength. The holes drilled in the 'alligator' biner were opened like a zipper before it failed. Hilarious, and awesome, but the polar opposite of good enough.
I used to climb with an old timer. This guy, while working at a gym, would drill holes in carabiners when retiring them. The idea was like the casino dice with holes in them. This was to prevent yahoos from using retired gear they found around a gym or a dumpster. I can't fathom people climbing on these. He would use them for key chains and what not so not useless nor dead.
Those carbineers are roughly an I beam shape and an I beam shape is super strong in most directions while being really lightweight but it needs all three flat faces to have that kind of strength; combined they're stronger than all three individually so if you remove most of the material from one of those faces it compromises the other two as well, generally a really bad idea for any area that's going to see lots of force (which is why carbineers with holes in areas that aren't under heavy stress or subjected to torque forces under normal loading are probably okay)
They do have castellated beams. But those are designed by engineers, not drilled in someone's basement.
I think they'll break ~%70 of the MBS
Wow that was much lower than I thought. I figured most of the strength was in the thick sides rather than in the middle but I'm sure each part works together to reinforce the others. Sum of its parts kind of thing.
@@exicx If the main thing you are protecting against is a bending moment then the outer surfaces do most of the work, but in tension the cross sectional area is important. These holes significantly reduced that along the spine. Some holes on the gate side likely wouldn't cause as much of an issue. The gate is already a weak point, hence weakening an overly strong spot next to it wont change the failure condition.
Great experiment, thanks.
I lost it at the 3" piece of backpack strap. đ€Ł
Makes sense that holes in the spine actually change its structural behavior, especially when they're large enough to actually take material out of the edges. Seems like the gate side is fine though, aside from chemical/corrosive/untreated surface issues if you drill it yourself.
The question is: does one hole weaken the carabiner, while adding this mounting point to it....
I don't think it would - It's not in a structurally relevant area, the load when it's holding weight would be along the solid spine, but the hole in the commercial model is on the latch side.
The engineers of those things must roll their eyes so hard they can see their own brains.
This has darwin award written all over it.
My god why would you do this??
As a design enigneer, who does stress analysis in CAD a few times per month, I can tell you, don't ever do this.
90% of R&D for a carbiner is analysis and optimization nowadays, of which 3/4th are done in software. Why? Because carabiners are all the same essentially. They have one job, you won't be able to reinvent the carabiner.
If you wonder, the lengths Petzl and Co go to, for optimizing their carabiners are surely insane. You can always add more variables and parameters or different applications to any simulation, which all increase the computational workload exponentially and sometimes even logarithmically!
This is possibly the most rediculuously dangerous thing I've seen on this channel, people really do this? even if it was "super good enough" how sure would you be that you didn't rill a hole a mill too far one way or another, or stressed the metal?
Mr. Ryan Jenks, channel suggestion for shorts. One of the best ways I've seen shorts used is to cut interesting clips out of past videos and pin a comment linking back to that video.
The algorithm seems to like 1 short a day.
Effectively driving traffic back to recycled content.
I want this channel to get so many subscribers and views you don't need any money from other places to do everything you want.
I appreciate you testing everything, including practices that would be considered ill-legit. I know you run the risk of affirming a practice like that, but on the other hand you sometimes discover how to turn your carabiner into an alligator! And that is worth it IMO
I think you've thoroughly convinced the community to not do this.
I dunno, what I learned is to not make 15 holes, but 3 or 4 should be pretty good!! ;)
@@Daniel-ng8fi Safest way is to drill just one hole, but one inch in diameter. Placement is irrelevant. It'll immediately turn every carabiner into a safety carabiner. Unless you repair it with duct tape. Well....
Theoretically drilling holes in the web should make a minimal difference in strength, but the diameter of those holes looks to be large enough that the stress concentration around the holes would have extended into the flanges, weakening the carabiner significantly. Forged holes should have less of an impact because the grain structure will reduce the stress concentration area.
Sharp edges from the drill holes become stress concentration points.
My press-pause-pre-test comments: I think it will break at the same spots. That the holes will not diminish the overall break point dynamic. I do think, however, if the tension was to twist then it could compromise. Post-test comments: wow! Was I ever wrong!!! Great test. Clear test result. The middle needs that support. Thank you very much!!
I drilled my Chouinard hexes. They are the original symmetrical ones! Made sure to use a lot of oil when I drilled them!......and I'm alive! That was in 1979, Chouinard hexes were sold drilled then, and the "new" thinner hexes with no holes were just hitting the market! They are 400 pounds stronger than drilled hexes, for the same weight. They are still being sold today!
In the 70s or 80s (I can't remember exactly) there was a fad among cyclists called "Drillium" where people were drilling holes in their bike components (chainrings, deraileurs, etc) to ligthen the bike. The idea being to save weight on climbs.
80s/90s it was. I can remember. Fat Guys with Klein Attitude MTB. And everything was drilled.
the "aligatoring" of the spine shows how important the webbing is for it's strength ....... it's an "I beam".
the alligator had me say "woah" out loud
My cousin once called me and told me he was modifying his Cbr1000 frame for weight.
I told him on phone dont do it, frames are already as light as they can be ,manufacturers aren't stupid. Thats 1960s BS .
Dude swiss cheeses his ENTIRE frame with 3/8 holes, and is all proud! We all gathered ,eyes wide < aghast at the mayhem this guy can create in 1 day alone at a shop.
Needless to say, after the first ride, he needed a new frame...lolz
If you notice, it breaks where youâve hit the fillets with the holes. Thatâs because you are then intruding on the beam, not merely the web.
There are also guidelines for how much web you need around holes, but itâs not something an amateur should be messing with.
In those carabiner examples, I observed in their carabiner design with the holes in it did not have any holes on the spine⊠and all of your carabiners in your experiment when you put holes in the carabiner all broke at the spine⊠facinating
You don't need a parashute to go skydiving...
You only need one if you want to go twice.
I've seen some stupid shit in my life but this completely amazes me....
When it comes to holes near edges, the edge distance matters.
The camp photon was sick đ
I dropped engineering college, but one thing I learned in there is that any holes done to a structure are stress concentrators. In those areas the, let's say, 12kN become 20kN (just random numbers as e.g.).
Drilling = BAD idea.
Even more. Factor 3 in ideal environment.
The cycling world has been doing this for a while, they call it drillium, as its the lightest element and is created by drilling.
Always look forward to your videos Ryan. As a mountaineer, i would never bother with lightening forged aluminum offset D's - there are so many other, heavier pieces in on my rack. The offset D is already designed as the lightest. Maybe go with the gut loss suggestion first . As a structural engineer, adding holes (even good ones-centered with entry/exit radii) always introduces bending, bearing and shear stress problems to deal with. Normally i would run a finite element analysis for someone doing this but what's the point? Petzl engineering must have at the very least done the analysis to choose slots over holes. How did people ever carry heavy racks up El Cap in the old days with everything steel? Are we turning into wimps or just have too much time on our hands? Thanks for the educational entertainment as alwaysđ
My favourite episode!
If what you're doing in recreation involves pushing those kind of weight-saving edges, that tells me you have the discipline to get your ass to the gym and either get a touch stronger, lose a tiny amount of bodyweight, or just simply, take a shit before you climb.
I raced bicycles in the 70s and 80s. We had our drill-out craze in the early 70s. Then we got over it. Fortunately there were surprisingly few failures.
I wouldn't be surprised if the process/heat of drilling messed with the temper of the remaining aluminum as well. I love DIY stuff, but safety gear is very carefully engineered, manufactured, and tested for a reason.
It amuses me how parts of the carabiners just disappear into the shadow realm
As you showed in your tests it's not simply that they weaken the strength but they introduce unknown weak points that can have drastically random and dangerous results
You can use a technique called Finite Element Analysis to visualize what would happen under tension in terms of failure modes before drilling the holes if you had a CAD model of it.
I always do that, it's more light. People should do that, it's completely safe. I encourage everyone reading this to do it
The theory is good. It follows castellated beams. The bending neutral axis is in the middle. It's why the web is thin and the compression and tension sides thick. But they have done the weight saving for you by making the web thin.
Castellated beams have a very controlled set of forces. Your carabiner does not.
Drilling holes adds uncertainty i wouldn't be comfortable with.
I'd rather loose some fat, shave my head, not wear a shirt, cut and melt my straps and laces, bring higher energy density, less tasty food, leave the low importance parts of a first aid kit behind get a lighter rope, use nuts instead of cams and use an open ended catheter to keep my bladder constantly drained.
Rather than do this.
The act of drilling out material after manufacturing probably causes work hardening which requires tempering restore the strength of the metal. I imagine Petzl does this with its carabiners. Drilling a hole also makes a leverage point where one side becomes a fulcrum and the other a tether taking all the force.
This one is gonna be BIG! Great Video bro!
What video did you test the cypher wire gates? I have a few of those and I donât use them for climbing because I donât know much about the company or their reliability
You should do a stress analysis on a 3d model of carabiner designs, figure out where the areas of least stress are, and drill out there. I'm sure that the companies already do it, but just to see what happens.
Huh, that's way stronger than I was expecting. It might be a good way to mark retired carabiners that I use for things like holding my water bottle or caulk bag.
This guy is giving people dangerous ideas.
This is an instance where calling someone an idiot could save their life
Want to be a different - just make few new holes!
Petzl rocks!
In college I was on a Formula student racecar design team where the cars were ~400lb. There was plenty of design optimization of components for weight without going under the established safety factors, we didn't just move the safety limit down. We still talked about "driver mods" aka losing weight, since if your best driver was 20lb overweight that's like 5% of the total system weight you could save with no engineering. Reducing weight by moving the safety standard lower is not the way, this is horrifying.
Got anymore details on the context for this guy's gear mods? Big wall, remote alpine first ascents or something? Insane either way, these were breaking lower than those non-rated "12kN" hammock carabiners from Amazon.
Actually one design I worked on was making a part with a similar I-beam (that's an " i ") structure and what we found is that having a thin, continuous web of material between the tall sides gives you a very high improvement in strength for very little extra weight, whereas even cutting a single hole through the webbing causes a major stress concentration. To make it lighter, keep making the web thinner, but don't cut any holes. Carabiners have a pretty thin web as is, and certainly the engineers have optimized for that especially along the spine.
I appreciate the use of rigorous science to address claims.
it would be awesome to see everything you have learned to see if you could place holes in a bener without making it half as strong.
Years ago, OK Decades ago, Well OK in the late 70's I was actively climbing in the area around Boulder, Colorado. I was also in the Air Force assigned to Lowry AFB, where I met a guy assigned to the Non Destructive Testing section. He regularly tested his gear. He retired a couple of his carabineers because he discovered they had, and I quote, massive microfractures! I thought he was a bit of a nut.
That's like people hotglueing sparkling gems onto their steering wheel. Looks nice, but makes your airbag a great frag bomb.
More like removing the airbag to save weight and improve fuel efficiency.
@@MK_ULTRA420 Technically you'r closer but my example is a real thing...
I'd love you thoughts on James Bond's shoe laces in For your Eyes Only, when he uses them as a sliding step to climb up a rope.