College - Author 1

College of Engineering

Department - Author 1

Mechanical Engineering Department

Degree Name - Author 1

BS in Mechanical Engineering

College - Author 2

College of Engineering

Department - Author 2

Mechanical Engineering Department

Degree - Author 2

BS in Mechanical Engineering

College - Author 3

College of Engineering

Department - Author 3

Mechanical Engineering Department

Degree - Author 3

BS in Mechanical Engineering

College - Author 4

College of Engineering

Department - Author 4

General Engineering Department

Degree - Author 4

BS in General Engineering

Date

6-2020

Primary Advisor

Sarah T. Harding, College of Engineering, Mechanical Engineering Department

Abstract/Summary

Spring loaded camming devices or “cams” are used in traditional rock climbing as a means of active fall protection. Climbers place cams in cracks and fissures in the rock wall. The cam’s lobes press against the walls, locking it in place, anchoring the climber in case of a fall. Currently, there is a lack of large cams on the market. Only two small companies produce cams that are usable in cracks 6.5 inches wide and larger, however their designs are either too heavy and/or lack features to be comfortable. We are a group of mechanical engineering students at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, and at the beginning of this project we aimed to design, manufacture, and test a large active fall protection device that improves on the currently available designs. Primarily, we wanted our design to be lightweight, strong, and have a semi-flexible stem. Due to the COVID-19 outbreak and campus closure in March 2020, we were forced to adapt and modify our goals to be achievable while we continued to work remotely. Since we did have access to Cal Poly facilities, we built a single camming device instead of the planned ten and were unable to tensile test the final cam. Even so, we feel that the testing results obtained from this prototype will be able to guide future iterations. The Final Design Report summarizes the background and market research we conducted, explains our objectives of the project, outlines and justifies the design concept, describes our final prototype and how we manufactured it, and details the formal testing procedure required to validate our calculations as well as provides recommendations for moving forward. We found that the prototype met all specifications but for the weight limit. It costs less than $130 per cam to manufacture, is usable in the targeted 6-9 inch range of rock crack widths, and has a flexible stem as requested by the climbing community. The final weight of the cam is 1135 g, which is a bit above our maximum desired weight of 900 g. We are confident that this design has the capability to take significant weight off the design with continued tensile testing.

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