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General Climbing Discussion

Topic Date User

Guess The (Arapiles) Route 10-Feb-2012 At 12:01:45 AM Climboholic

Message

On 9/02/2012 mikllaw wrote:
>can you break a biner by fatigue in real life? or just tear it apart in
>a singular, orgasmic, overload

Apparently you can break a biner from fatigue, but it requires many cycles at a load much greater than you'd expect from normal lead falls with dynamic rope.

Al alloy is very poor in fatigue and the only reason we don't get failures is the huge safety margin. I wonder if the new super lighweight biners are cutting into that margin?

I think it's only a matter of time until manufacturers start making carbon fibre biners. The bike industry has been doing it for years! The only hurdle will be some form of protective coating to mitigate impact damage.