Carabiner failure

[Scheffa]

Had 2 dmm oval carabiners fail this week 2 days apart, spring that closed the gate dislodged and came out the bottom.

I will attach photos showing what went wrong.

Both biners were checked prior to climbing and the fault happened during a changeover both times.

Photos and a description have been sent to the manufacturer to get their feedback on it.
Will update when k hear something

Not posting to shame their products or anything, just to make people aware of a possible failure point that I haven’t heard of before.

 

[oldoakman]

Thanks for posting. Please let us know what the response is from dmm.

 

[flushcut]

Maybe share this with DMM as well. It could be a bad batch.

 

[SeanRuel]

I have also had this failure on a few Dmm O biners

 

[Neill]

How old were these?

 

[SeanRuel]

Mine happened in under 6 months iirc

 

[Boomslang]

I used to exclusively run DMM biners, but since they changed the gate barrel design something has felt off about them. I stick with Petzl now.

 

[Merle Nelson]

Anyone watching failures info may be interested in this guy's YouTube channel. This particular video is not a great representation of his work in my opinion. He has a break test machine and built a tower test structure. (Which I would have used with weight for this video instead of one's body.)

 

[evo]

Anyone watching failures info may be interested in this guy's YouTube channel. This particular video is not a great representation of his work in my opinion. He has a break test machine and built a tower test structure. (Which I would have used with weight for this video instead of one's body.)

Agreed but freakin rock climbers are a different breed, while I’d never want to fall I can see where someone could be comfortable with enough exposure and experience. Pretty sure he had a backup too.

 

[Reach]

Agreed but freakin rock climbers are a different breed, while I’d never want to fall I can see where someone could be comfortable with enough exposure and experience. Pretty sure he had a backup too.

Falling in the rock world is very different than falling in the tree world. Rock gear is made for it, with very dynamic ropes (I used to drop 3’ just sitting back into 70’ of rope that had been pulled tight by my belayer) and a properly trained belayer will know how to catch a falling person properly, to minimize the shock. It’s far from the impact force of dropping into a static rope like we use with trees.

 

[Merle Nelson]

Yes, he had back up - expected to get failure in that vid.

 

[evo]

Falling in the rock world is very different than falling in the tree world. Rock gear is made for it, with very dynamic ropes (I used to drop 3’ just sitting back into 70’ of rope that had been pulled tight by my belayer) and a properly trained belayer will know how to catch a falling person properly, to minimize the shock. It’s far from the impact force of dropping into a static rope like we use with trees.

Yeah… f-dat not my idea of fun, 20’ fall on a rock face, probably smashing my face into the wall.. nope..

 

[Reach]

Yeah… f-dat not my idea of fun, 20’ fall on a rock face, probably smashing my face into the wall.. nope..

I don’t do it anymore, but I used to think it was fun. And again, learning to fall properly is very important, so that you do not smash your face on a rock wall. You need a really trusted partner to belay you too, their skill is as important as your own if you want to survive without injury.

 

[Merle Nelson]

Here is one of his videos more pertinent to arbs.

 

[Merle Nelson]

 

[moss]

Interesting! Majority of my biners are DMM, they've worn very well for me. That's quite a trick to get that gate spring piece to come out of there. Looking forward to hearing what DMM has to say, thx for posting it.
-AJ

 

[Scheffa]

Interesting! Majority of my biners are DMM, they've worn very well for me. That's quite a trick to get that gate spring piece to come out of there. Looking forward to hearing what DMM has to say, thx for posting it.
-AJ

That’s what I thought, then I happened a couple days later to another one.
I’m not known for having great luck

 

[Naturarbo]

so far only simond rock biner has failed with me.
Not failed we always check before climb, but 1 spring didn't came back.
This 1 is not top of pop like dmm.

 

[treebing]

I've had bad luck with dmm biner gates. I've had the best luck with CT. The best cost as well.

 

[moss]

That’s what I thought, then I happened a couple days later to another one.
I’m not known for having great luck

The other thing is, and this shouldn't matter... I always orient my biners gate opening down. Gravity shouldn't matter for the gate spring but it could be part of why the piece of steel is working its way out of the gate in the "inverted" position. Clearly a carabiner gate has to be fully functional in all orientations but you may have exposed a weakness in the gate design. Nothing like hard field testing to expose a problem!
-AJ