DMM Revolver Carabiners

[fuzzy-hair-man]

Has anyone seen these:



It's a DMM revolver see:
http://www.dmmclimbing.com/Page.asp?page=45#

A carabiner with a small pulley built in supposedly to limit friction for climbers pulling a rope through carabiners when climbing.

I thought the pulley has to be almost a toy

BUT

It also complies with the standard for pulleys EN 12278 and mentions it's use for

Innovative lightweight rescue, hauling and rigging applications.

I was thinking it might make a good emergency use pulley for pick-offs or similar. I could replace the carabiner at the end of long cowstail with one of these. Pity they don't seem to make them as a locking carabiner.

Note: My long cowstail is not used to connect to my hand ascender.

The weight and strength are similar to existing carabiners but they do cost more as you'd expect.

What do you think?
Has anyone seen one?
Has anyone used one?

[fuzzy-hair-man]

Reviews in the climbing gear forums seem concerned about clogging up the pulley with dirt if this is the case it would be even worse in a caving environment.

A interesting quote from http://www.rockclimbing.com/post/305676

Hi Dan,

Thanks for the enquiry. As you can imagine with such an exciting piece of kit, we have been doing a lot of testing and prototyping. At present, we have the weight down to about 44g but this is not a final figure. It should be 24kN gate closed and 10 kN gate open. It is very interesting what happens to the biner when it is the last piece of gear clipped. If the impact force is less than 2kN, the roller will rotate and the force may be transferred a bit (however this would be a small low impact fall). In normal fall situations, the impact force would be over 3kN and at this force, the revolver main body stretches and the sides pinch in on the roller, locking it. This means there is little or no additional transfer of force to the other side of the system. If there are then revolvers further down the system, it means more rope can be active in absorbing impact, potentially lessening the force on the belayer. Our technical director is going out to the Mammut factory in Switzerland to verify our findings on their test rig in March.
Hope this helps.

Best regards,
Rob Wilson
DMM Customer Services

There seems to be a fair few reports about the pulley failing so it's probably better left to the climbers

Still... interesting

[GoHighGoDeep]

Its a good idea... but i personally think that the little plastic pulley that petzl makes is probably a better, cheaper, less prone to failure option... KISS principle and all...

that said, i do really like most of DMMs gear...

[speloman]

I Agree, multiple parts = multiple problems. But a good Idea.

[cavedoc]

but i personally think that the little plastic pulley that petzl makes is probably a better, cheaper, less prone to failure option... KISS principle and all...

Have you ever used one? A group of played around with one once to see what it could do and decided that it made things worse instead of better. It kept getting off center and jamming. In the end we preferred just using the oval carabiner and skipping the Petzl thingy. Has any one had good results with it?

[NZcaver]

but i personally think that the little plastic pulley that petzl makes is probably a better, cheaper, less prone to failure option... KISS principle and all...

Have you ever used one? A group of played around with one once to see what it could do and decided that it made things worse instead of better. It kept getting off center and jamming. In the end we preferred just using the oval carabiner and skipping the Petzl thingy. Has any one had good results with it?

If you mean the Petzl Ultralegere - I guess you could say it's less prone to failure, but only because it never works! It doesn't roll smoothly, and the rope often slips off the sheeve. I actually threw my one away.

But the Oscillante works well - I have several, and always keep one with my Frog system.

As for that DMM Revolver - interesting concept, but I don't really see the point. Either use a carabiner, or use a 'real' pulley which captures the rope properly. And for lead climbing (which this seems to mainly be designed for), I would think a little friction between your climbing rope and the carabiner on each piece of pro isn't really a bad thing. :?