After I posted I thought for a minute I was supposed to reference Burrapeg, not Santiago, such was the contribution of Burrapeg in his threads which I followed closely. Kudos Burrapeg and I mean that sincerely. Brother from another mother sort of thing. My first unit looked like the rollgliss/dewalt combo. I scooped up a rollgliss from the same listing Burrapeg got from but I didn't do much with it. It was neat to study the sheaves on it.
A comment on safety. The sheaves on my first one were larger and would freewheel down in conjunction with hitch/wrench when you popped the clutch. Popping the clutch is not a safety concern. The wrench is above the hitch and the ascender is below it. The hitch is always the core.
I chose to squeeze the sheaves down to fit better under the bridge area of the saddle. That's when I found the overall drag just a little too much. Perhaps I should loosen the wrench. Popping the clutch is just slipping a small button. Going down for positioning changes under drive is just to avoid clutching and configuration changes. Click reverse squeeze trigger, get slack, grab hitch. Small position changes.
Batteries are pretty standard inside: 18650's series and paralleled as needed be it laptop drill or tesla. There's other out there but 18650's are the bread and butter. The hard part is protection and management circuitry - which is tied to liability. Heating or blowing up the drive control is the other issue. And wires/connectors integrity. Oops, frayed wire shorted - smoke, hot, melt was that rope plastic? Doh. Or electronic malfunction - "turn off you stupid ... thing ...!!!! crunch. The kill switch on a wraptor is a safety feature, not just a use feature. I've always got a few shivers thinking about my PSP being an ignitable tank of gas and a hot muffler and plastic rope. But, risks can be managed as has been shown (so far).
The drill based prototypes get to tap the manufacturers embedded safety features built into both the batteries and controllers. At least the newer LiIon batteries aren't as burnable as the original chemistry was. On an older drill instead of electronic torque limiting there's the good old bumpy mechanical slip clutches to prevent injury in case of some other control failure. This is in the under-hitch configuration which I guess is the big change from the original wraptor concept. Under hitch can be argued to be not-life-support just like the rope wrench which could alleviate a lot of concerns. Maybe this other class of ascenders/positioners is not true to the original wraptor moving overhead PSP/TIP concept i.e. you hang a DRT system off the bottom of a wraptor.
Best wishes to all.
A comment on safety. The sheaves on my first one were larger and would freewheel down in conjunction with hitch/wrench when you popped the clutch. Popping the clutch is not a safety concern. The wrench is above the hitch and the ascender is below it. The hitch is always the core.
I chose to squeeze the sheaves down to fit better under the bridge area of the saddle. That's when I found the overall drag just a little too much. Perhaps I should loosen the wrench. Popping the clutch is just slipping a small button. Going down for positioning changes under drive is just to avoid clutching and configuration changes. Click reverse squeeze trigger, get slack, grab hitch. Small position changes.
Batteries are pretty standard inside: 18650's series and paralleled as needed be it laptop drill or tesla. There's other out there but 18650's are the bread and butter. The hard part is protection and management circuitry - which is tied to liability. Heating or blowing up the drive control is the other issue. And wires/connectors integrity. Oops, frayed wire shorted - smoke, hot, melt was that rope plastic? Doh. Or electronic malfunction - "turn off you stupid ... thing ...!!!! crunch. The kill switch on a wraptor is a safety feature, not just a use feature. I've always got a few shivers thinking about my PSP being an ignitable tank of gas and a hot muffler and plastic rope. But, risks can be managed as has been shown (so far).
The drill based prototypes get to tap the manufacturers embedded safety features built into both the batteries and controllers. At least the newer LiIon batteries aren't as burnable as the original chemistry was. On an older drill instead of electronic torque limiting there's the good old bumpy mechanical slip clutches to prevent injury in case of some other control failure. This is in the under-hitch configuration which I guess is the big change from the original wraptor concept. Under hitch can be argued to be not-life-support just like the rope wrench which could alleviate a lot of concerns. Maybe this other class of ascenders/positioners is not true to the original wraptor moving overhead PSP/TIP concept i.e. you hang a DRT system off the bottom of a wraptor.
Best wishes to all.
