Design Requirements

-Automatically lock to stop a fall or a rappel
-Belay from a harness or an anchor
-Belay and rappel from the same device
-Use “normal” belay technique like the Black Diamond ATC
-Don’t have to take brake hand off of rope to operate
-Feed rope smoothly
-Hold single or double ropes
-Use standard 8.5mm-11mm rope sizes.
-Compact and light weight
-Obvious how to use
-Be aesthetically pleasing and robust

The proposed benefits of our design

Our device should:

-Increase safety by providing a device that automatically locks while retaining its versatility for use in all types of climbing
-Reduce injuries/death from belayer error or inattentiveness

Our Final Designs

Pictured on the left is the CAM design and on the right is the OFFSET CIRCLE design.

These two devices, along with corresponding CAD drawings are the fruit of almost nine months of brainstorming, design, fabrication, testing and analysis.  We hope to see one or both designs in production in the future and hope our client Black Diamond can utilize what we have done to achieve this.

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