What started out as a project for a class turned into an obsession that lasted for a year and a half. Using the tools from the Olin Machine Shop at Colorado College, I made (almost entirely from raw materials) my own rock climbing cam, a near perfect clone of a Black Diamond C4 #4 cam. The entire project was self-motivated and self-directed, and I did almost everything myself, with help from a few people. The final product ended up being nearly the same strength as the commercial version, as we tested with the force sensor that I made.
I was in PC108: Intro to Machining and Fabrication during spring semester of 2016. Each student picked a project and worked on that independently throughout the semester with the supervision of our excellent instructor and machine shop wizard Steve Burt (when I say we throughout this series of articles, I usually mean Steve and I).
I chose to create a rock climbing cam. This interested me because I enjoy rock climbing, I would get to learn more about the physics involved with climbing, and I would get practice working with many machining techniques and equipment. Everything was built from raw materials in the Olin Machine Shop at CC and the Pike's Peak Makerspace, with the exception of the sewn webbing loop at the end of the stem, which was made by Runout Customs in Moab. Some of the equipment and techniques I used were a computer controlled CNC mill to cut out the lobes, a 3D printer to make the trigger, a manual mill to machine out the axle housing, a lathe to turn down the axles and stem casing, a hydraulic press to attach the stem, a TIG welder and torch during an attempt to attach the stem, and various hand tools.
I was in PC108: Intro to Machining and Fabrication during spring semester of 2016. Each student picked a project and worked on that independently throughout the semester with the supervision of our excellent instructor and machine shop wizard Steve Burt (when I say we throughout this series of articles, I usually mean Steve and I).
I chose to create a rock climbing cam. This interested me because I enjoy rock climbing, I would get to learn more about the physics involved with climbing, and I would get practice working with many machining techniques and equipment. Everything was built from raw materials in the Olin Machine Shop at CC and the Pike's Peak Makerspace, with the exception of the sewn webbing loop at the end of the stem, which was made by Runout Customs in Moab. Some of the equipment and techniques I used were a computer controlled CNC mill to cut out the lobes, a 3D printer to make the trigger, a manual mill to machine out the axle housing, a lathe to turn down the axles and stem casing, a hydraulic press to attach the stem, a TIG welder and torch during an attempt to attach the stem, and various hand tools.
I started work that spring but only actually finished in the fall of 2016. As you can see in the picture above, the final product looked pretty good, almost like something you could buy in a store! So it looks good, but the much more important question is how strong it actually is. I didn't want to use it while actually climbing and trust anyone's life to it. I placed it in a crack and hung my weight on it, so we knew it was that strong, but we needed some way to safely apply a huge load that we could accurately measure. This was the incentive for me to build my force sensor. Using the sensor, we pulled on the cam until it broke at around 14 kilonewtons/3000 lbs, which is the same strength as the real Black Diamond C4 cam!
Each of the components of the cam has its own post, you can see the list of them all at the top right of this page, or skip straight to the page about making the lobes. Enjoy!
Each of the components of the cam has its own post, you can see the list of them all at the top right of this page, or skip straight to the page about making the lobes. Enjoy!