I bet those AirXtreme biners had a 7000 series aluminum in the locks when they were rated and somewhere along the way someone decided that 6000 series is close enough.
It's amazing how many people over such a wide range use ropes an clips an pins,. Rock climbers, tree fellers, sailers, fisherman, SeaMen, airmen, really bringing us all together Ryan, thank you my man 👍👍👍
Only difference one is a hobby other a job. Soon as you get into working environment the equipment change substantially. Aluminum is avoided like a plague, you rarely see much color and ratings are part of the equipment and not painted. Dont know about USA but in Europe there is a second layer as these kind of equipment come with certification from government oversite. Without it you cant use is in work and even end up in jail for reckless endangerment using uncertified gear.
@@scasnywell I commercially fish lobster and other critters, an I'm a big user of the 3twist rope, this is all very interesting stuff the braided ropes
I know nothing about paragliding/para-motoring but the takeaway I got from this episode is that these folks should stop trying to reinvent the wheel with these oddly shaped carabiners and just use steel quicklinks.
But they are heavy and hard/cumbersome to open, and most pilots diconnect their wing after every flight. Some Hike&Fly Pilots moved to Softshackles and leave their wing and harness connected, but some already are moving back to something like the Edelrid Ease (19G with a Locking Insert). And they usually use more narrow webbing as risers, compared to PPG wings
Seems like itis only an issue if they are using straps that are too skinny though. Probably want your wide, flat straps to not be bunched up with a normal shaped quick link or carabiner?
A guide at an adventure company I was working at dropped three brand new aluminium carabiners about 100m onto rocks. No visible damage but we tested them all. They were all rated at 30kN, two broke at around 10 - 15kN and one failed at 1.2kN. We did the same test with steel carabiners that had also been dropped (this time deliberately) and they all deformed at around their rated strength. We found every time aluminium breaks suddenly whereas steel deforms, the gate pin breaks and they slowly bend. Even a bent one is still strong enough to hang on. The company went to all steel carabiners the next day! For personal use when you know the history of your gear aluminium is great, but when used from a common gear pool where you don't know what happened to it yesterday steel is the only logical choice. But warning, stainless steel is less predictable! It can work harden and break suddenly.
Aluminum also has a finite fatigue life -- all fatigue adds up until eventually it fails, even if that is a very long time. Steel fatigue under a certain threshold doesn't add up, and thus lower the time/fatigue cycles to failure. (One reason for the inspection and replacement cycles on airplanes -- it's designed for it obviously, but makes fatigue engineering and maintenance very important.) (EDIT: Sorry, I typed that before he talked about it in the video.. :)
Aluminum carabiners - you can use it for holding less important items than your life. I use one as a keyring on the belt to avoid having my keys cutting up my pockets.
Stainless steel does Work harden, but you already have to be at yield stresses to do so. So if it’s never opened up or has obvious peening on the surface it’s not hardened. It’s not something that can happen “invisibly”
@@geekswithfeet9137 Carabiners and stuff yes but we had some stainless steel wire ladders that some idiot thought would be useful in a commercial cave trip we were offering. The wire broke at where the rungs had been swaged on where the bit that could flex met the bit that couldn't, typically a quarter of a millimetre in to the swage. The only way you could visibly examine it was to flex it and look for any broken strands, but flexing it only hurried up the work hardening. The other nasty one was a stainless steel threaded pin glued in and an eyebolt on it for a rope anchor. Another idiot had installed it and found it was a bit too long so put a nut on the pin under the eyebolt. As people abseiled on it you could see it flexing back and forth. I was a bit worried so cut it down so the shoulders of the eyebolt sat squarely in the rock. And I backed it us as well!
@@mirandahotspring4019 oh yeah completely different story with wire rope. You can get swaging systems that have bell-end entries to spread the strain over a larger radius.
I don't climb or use a paramotor but I love this channel. I used to teach high school chemistry and physics. I think I love the testing methodology the most about this channel.
Another great video, Ryan. Your content calls to mind the importance of scientific TRANSPARENCY. Something is lost when we are lulled into trusting the results of opaque testing which is doubly suspect when there may be questionable incentives, or when a company is performing their OWN tests. I think your passion and thoroughness are doing more to promote scientific literacy than many programs designed for that purpose...Keep it up!
In electronic manufacturing, chain of custody is required for quality if parts aren't bought from an approved distributor or the manufacturer directly. Seems like the same philosophy would apply here. There's a reason manufacturers don't buy microcontrollers from amazon. ;-)
Hi Ryan! On ratings- the paragliders themselves are tested to 14kn or more under the EN926 tests! Carabiners that break lower are the weak-point in the whole system. I'd be very happy to do a video (if there's interest) exploring what the attachment points for the wing and reserve parachute look like, and give a closer look at materials (dyneema, kevlar, nylon etc) for the whole system. Often there's protective arrangements to prevent carabiners moving around or angle-loading on the harness side. On the wing side of the connection though, I think more research is needed, as different wings can have lightweight risers that do not occupy the width of the carabiners. I'm exceptionally grateful for all the learning from your channel. For example brummel-splicing dyneema and kevlar has been super-useful for gear repairs in the field, but I've learned so much also about softlinks and quicklinks and a lot of the other bits of hardware we use. Thanks!
Paramotor wings are rated to only 5.25G under the DGAC certification. EN certified paragliders are rated to around 8G (within the certified PG weight range only) and acro wings are a bit higher at 12G. It would be **extremely** difficult and unlikely to achieve anywhere near 14kn of force. We are talking about a very heavy pilot doing serious acro on an acro paraglider. Also there are two carabiners (not just one). Achieving 14kn of force would have much more interesting consequences because not only would other things fail (swing arms, frame attachments), there are **no** paramotor harnesses that are rated for anywhere close to those loads.
That would be a great video! Is there a safer alternative to caribeners? I'll check your page out! 😊 Tucker isn't exactly the pinnacle of safety and good ideas. 😂 Just ask Dell Schanze. Video attached unless links are censored... th-cam.com/video/KqMgmHZYZHY/w-d-xo.htmlsi=VxrqvHfp7lspWqsC
Mildly related note: I've noticed a theme of goods and zero liability Chinese goods. An easy hint is names you genuinely believe are made up (because they are). They make a brand, let it get threatened with lawsuits, fold up that name and do a new one. If anything happens to you or your stuff, good luck tracking down the company to sue because they won't exist. This is a feature, not a bug. It's no surprise to me they'd simply paint over old stock and print something on top. I am not sure how to help consumer awareness as most consumers mind their wallet over their common sense, but niche things like this definitely shine a light on areas some might not presume this practice occurs in. I am grateful for your work!
"Did they get the right aluminum in the vat..." to then forge the carabiners? That's important, but it's only part of what is required to manufacture reliable life-safety gear. "Real" gear manufacturers pull random samples from their production runs, do testing like this, then use statistical analysis to confirm that each batch is performing up to spec (along with lots of other critical steps and checks!)
quality control is everything in mass manufacturing. At the same time, though, the real killer for all aluminum casting is porosity. Dissolved gasses form bubbles when cooling, and create tunnels as the liquid / solid boundary moves when the part solidifies. In a car engine this can mean coolant or oil leaks in a visibly good engine, or in load bearing parts, extreme reduction in max load before failure. The bubbles can become quite large when no degas methods are used. I've seen fluxes and nitrogen bubblers used to degas the metal. The porosity I'm most familiar with is microscopic, which has just as big an impact on structural integrity as the large voids.
Should see how webbing acts when left flat like on one of these square carabiners versus in the curve of an oval carabiner or something like a d-oval. I'd bet that those square profiles don't help at all, and in fact are worse since even fat webbing might slide to the gate side.
"but if you pull webbing into a curve, it is weakened", yeah, well, there might be a reason why climbers normally use tubular webbing. Don't skimp on the quality of safety-critical gear.
@@Alastair510 that's not the reason, and is debatable as a statemement to begin with. I see Non tubular slings and cordalette used way more often, and they can the same or better strength properties.
I'm sure non-tubular can have the same strength, but tubular has a couple of advantages: 1) for the same width webbing you are getting twice as much material. 2) when in a curve, it tends to 'roll' up and evens out the strain, (rather than stressing the edges) @@tylerlego41
I knew it was going to be a fascinating video when I saw you had a pile of the exact same thing. Any time a test needs that much repetition, something is being learned, and that's why I'm here!
I don’t do much climbing or paragliding, but I do trust my life to fall protection at fairly extreme heights (150-200 feet). I can’t say I’ve ever seen a gate retention system with such little interference as those air xtreme ones.
I run soft shackles (5mm dyneema with a button knot that i learnt on this channel) as my main PG attachments. Reason being is you can't cross load them, they're not susceptible to fatigue, they're lighter than the alu or steel equivalent and should have way more strength than needed. Just wish i had a line scale and a slacksnap setup to proof load them 😅
I also fly with very narrow attachment points (on both sides) so having the D-Shape from a standard climbing carabiner is doubly useful. I can share some more information for non-paramotoring paragliding carabiner use 😊and carabiner attachments.
This channel steered me towards soft shackles forever. I had an old chunk of synthetic winch cable and made a few up. They fit so nice in a pocket. Easy to set up even wearing gloves , no potential metal flying around and not had one even come close to fail. Right from the beginning of the video all I could think of is why they wouldn't use them as a back up to the carabineers or instead of for a paramotor.
Fascinating! Paramotoring just seems inherently more dangerous than climbing, seemingly with piloting errors leading to the majority (?) of accidents. The sport is so niche, I wouldn't be surprised if catastrophic failure of a carabiner has never happened, even with these bad carabiners on the market. That said, as the sport evolves, it's important to have discussions like these. Having two points of "undundancy" definitely seems like a mistake.
I don't know about flying paramotors (outside that a propellor on the ground or on your back is scary), but as a climber and paraglider pilot I don't see much of a difference. Climbing accidents also happen from mistakes mostly (inatentive belayer, wrongly used material, etc.). (((Funnily enough, climbers keep asking paraglider pilots 'Isn't flying very dangerous?' and pilots asking climbers 'Isn't climbing very dangerous?'. I usually answer that climbing, flying, and playing table tennis are equally dangerous if you do it like a madman.)))
Paramotoring and paragliding are way more dangerous than climbing (based on the percentage of severe injuries per 1000). But its not due to carabiner failures. Most are take off and landing accidents.
Kinda strange that you have a community and (be it a small one) industry making their stuff flying and they went with having two single points of failure instead of the usual airospace approach of "how many times redundant can we make it". Wonder if anyone is counting accidents.
Just the shape of those air extremes make me suspicious. You get the strength out of aluminum carabiners because they are designed to focus the load typically on the non-gated solid shank side. The pin on the gate has leverage so it never sees the full load. Being square I don't see how the air extremes control the load to use the strength of a shank. In fact as noted in the video the location of the load under load is somewhat random. Good designers don't like random. This is actually a fraud. I'm just wondering when that company is going to be sued.
Thanks, great episode! I do paragliding (not paramotor) many gliders use soft shackels instead of carabiners for weight saving. Also many gliders got regular Edelrid locker carabiners coming with the wing. Side note, pls hook up 2 linescales to the raisers of a paraglider, do spirals and se How much force you get!!! Would be a FIRST in paragliding history and very exciting to see!
Very interesting that basically everything except the "legit" Air Xtreme in steel broke at or above their rated strength when loaded with a straight pull, even including the somewhat questionable brands. Great results, and would love to see how the fatigued ones do!
That is likely why the guy prefers the steel ones because they might have a lower breaking point but aluminum is softer so it will stretch and fatigue at a lower rating but not actually break... but a failure is still a failure.
The ones where the pin blows out of back of the gate, I would really like to know what just a little bit more meat back there would do. 19 kn out of the alibaba clip and the pin rips though? don't cut it so close back there and that thing could do like 22 kn... I for one can not wait for the HowNOT2 carabiner production series in 5 years. You've just had the ultimate R&D cover and have a drawer of designs and specs to storm the market with the perfect design 🤣
Get a price of cordura off of an old backpack would be a good place to check for it. Cut out a rectangle, sew Velcro to each long side one front one back of course so you can close it as a tube you can wrap around your slings as needed to protect them. Cheap, effective, easy to make and easily replaced.
Thanks! This weekend doing Acro, I landed in my wing and the forces on my harnes after the rescue opening was AT LEAST 1500 kg ripping some of the stitching on the harness and some metal pieces (which is plenty strong enough in normal situations). with a normal harness i would likely have fallen out of it, but this one had backup straps behind. my friend say that I pulled 17G's when the rescue opend.. this again adds the question about the carabineers/softies used between harness and rescue.. but this should be more simmelar to climbing.. also, doing tumbling, its normal to pull higher G's than 3.. usually about 4 when in infinity and close to 7G's in entry.
I assume that since the straps you are attaching the carabiners to can be quite wide as shown in the video then the straps would get crunched up and not lay flat which would cause stress points.
@@dumbcrumb879 sounds like another test for Ryan! But also he pointed out they were using a lot of 1” webbing so I’m skeptical there. Steel oval carabiners or HMS style would be wide enough, I’d think.
I always figured that in turbulence you could get dynamic unloading and a square is harder to get webbing to move to cross load than it would be on an oval/ pear
I'm not fully cognizant of how the 'wing' works, but it's basically a parachute right? If you lose one out of two attachment points, doesn't that end just fly up uselessly and turn the whole 'wing' into a rope dangling above/behind you:?
Great episode 😊 Don’t fly but watch Tucker Wish I had more time to Climb but live vicariously though you both. Hope to see sum fall Big wall living footage soon 😊
You just opened a can of worms matey. We need you to test how much force UNHOOKED KITELOOPS generate. Also paragliding spiral dive with the risers on dynos would be sick to see
I'm UK based, but surprised you wouldn't trust rated gear from Walmart. I'd expect them to have decent supply chains etc. In the UK, we don't really have big box stores of the Walmart model, but we do have budget sports retailers, like Decathlon. I've always assumed that, for rated gear, they are fine, because there are standards! 😅😅
@@B-System huh. You wouldn't be able to get unrated gear at a shop like that in the UK (except shitty little beenas for stuff like your keys, which nobody sane would climb on)
Thank you so much for this video, I use soft links to connect my carabiner to my paramotor so I point load the low side of my carabiner. This video shows that I need to change it so it is using a full width webbing. Thank you!
As a rock climber the benefit of aluminum vs steel is the weight that you are hauling up the cliff as you climb. Since the para-motor is doing all of the work I don't see the benefit of using aluminum other than maybe aluminum is cheaper? but the cost/weight savings for two carabiners is minimal if your life is at risk of use over time. Two new steel carabiners every 5 years also seems reasonable. on another note climbers use two opposite and opposed at the master point of anchors.... are the loops big enough in para-motors to do the same? idk I don't para-motor
So is the lack of backup like part of it? Do they get more out of the flight knowing that if something breaks there's nothing backing it up? I'm only kidding. What I'm actually curious about is why the parachute flyers seem less concerned with redundancy.
The multiple-stamping impression is from a "pad walk" where the stamp pad in a pad printer has been moving around picking up ink in different locations instead of being refreshed cleanly for each stamping. It makes a huge mess of the result. Here's how such a machine works, and you have to either have a fully automated machine with product feeder or be asleep on the job to do such a bad job... th-cam.com/video/aZFfcA8v88U/w-d-xo.html
There are only a few actual carabiner manufacturers in China; if you are talking about a vat of AL, then you are talking about cheap poor, quality keychain units which will snap under a load of a flower pot full of water; these are made by backstreet vendors who have zero QC, and would mix the materials and mostly likely never pass any standards, you never know what old crap is mixing from wheels from a pram or stolen gate posts from Chornobyl. Actual manufacturing is using 7075 AL purchased in long-length rods, which are supplied with a certificate of manufacturing to a quality standard of GB/T 3191-2010 These rods are cut into lengths and bent to approximate the shape design of the carabiner to be produced. They are then hydraulic stamped into shape, polished for a smooth finish, then powder coated using Japanese paint conforming to GB/T 3191-2010/ The logo is laser etched with model code and production run details, which can then be tracked to the original batch rods used. Sample testing per 1,000 to destruction to meet qualifying kN ratings is registered against each production run and kept in a log. This channel is terrific, and I hope you keep strong and healthy due to your recent episode. Bless you, and take it easy.
Hi! Thanks for the subject! You could also test the Maillon Rapide Delta (often 3,5mm - 4mm) used for line attachment to risers: These are very exciting to watch open up and/or deform in flight (i.e. when not properly closed... especially exciting when it is a middle A-line: the most loadbearing). Happy landings
So this is why climbing gear is certified--small things like the insufficient lip to keep the gate in place would have probably been caught if this was certified.
It's quite easy to pull more than 3Gs in a spiral. Paramotorists don't think, they are mostly a special breed of knuckle draggers, who think trying to fly the slowest aircraft in the world everywhere on the throttle is a good idea. The Paramotor was designed to be a mobile hill, and used just like a Motor sailplane - power into a thermal, then go onto tick over, and only power back up if you cock up and need to climb again.
super interesting, thanks for the vid. Still digesting the information. I've always stuck with the alu that is supplied with my harnesses, but maybe I should replace them more than I have.....but maybe its also time to learn soft links.
Why no soft-shackles? A lot of us (paragliders) are changing wings or removing them multiple times a day. Between changing wings, storing wings separately from harnesses and other reasons its convenient to be able to use a carabiner. If you think of a Tandem Pilot who easily can have 10 flights with 10 passengers a day being able to easily attach and remove your wing from your harnesses is quite useful. Additionally having many multiples of webbing around a soft-shackle makes it hard to do a pre flight check to see if everything is correct. Two types of webbing attached on the opposite side of a metal thing is just easier to confirm. Finally thinking of redundancy: Most rescues are attached at a separate place on the harness (i think to remember that this is also true for paramotor-where they are attached to the motor side of things but don’t ask me 😅). My rescue parachute is attached to the back of my harness with two loops of webbing (the one from the harness and the one from the parachute) connected by using the webbing only or by using quick links. So if a carabiner would break i’d throw the reserve and rely on a separate attachment point to get me down safely.
@@SonnyKnutsonbecause one is usually super good enough when replaced after a couple of years (5y or 500-1000h should be fine). The incidents where broken carabiners where reported were way past this. Also the loops usually wouldn't fit a second carabiner.
Actually i fly with quite a few soft-shackles. They attach the individual lines to the risers. However some harnesses have 4 or even more pieces of webbing going into the carabiner before you attach the gliders risers. And on hard stuff these things being wrong are easier to spot,@@Xanthroid1.
I'm half way through and this is the data I've wanted to see for decades. I hate that notch design on those carabiners. It just looks weaker. There is no UIAA certification markings on any of those sketchy carabiners and I don't know if there is a paramotor carabiner certification. Can you double up carabiners on each side? Those flat sided gates look like they are designed to be side by side.
As a climber i dont really get, why those carabiners are not backed up in any way. Maybe there are reasons that i dont understand, @paramotorGuys plase explain
You just accept the risk. Like how you don't back up the biner in your belay device. Generally you're hanging off them but not falling onto them. Second if you want to be redundent your parachute is connected via quicklinks or soft shackles to the shoulders rather than your wing carabiners.
On the stamping, misstamps happens constantly at the most reputable manufacturers in the world. What they do though is either throw them out or sell them off (ideally without their logo) to someone else as B-stock. This is most likely what happened here. These are the ones that got stuck in the printing machine and sold to someone else to recoup some costs instead of just sending it to the trash pile. At the end of the day stamping straight and accurate is a science of it's own, nothing like calling a metal supplier and buying some stock from them. Who the original manufacturer was is a mystery though, and you should not trust them with your life.
Get a thermal camera. Watching stuff heat up as you pull it would be super cool. ...you probably want to get 2 cheap ones cuz it's gonna get smashed by flying metal sooner or later.
how do they test to get those numbers? THEY DON'T :D they just copy numbers that the real manufacturers use and mark it as EXPORT ONLY illegal to sell or use in their own country :P
I would bet they have steel test fixtures for those that underperformed but weren’t outright lies. That way as soon as the gate stretches the load transfers to the other side. I am amazed though that Caribbeaners actually break at the rated strength. Every other item I’m aware of needs to test at 1.5x the rating.
On my ppg frame the reserve fors to a different set of shackles that are on the arms not on the comfort bars. On my freeflight paraglider harness thr reserve connects to the same shackles that my glider connects to. As to the soft shackle question as a backup, I think the concern about that was that it might create more wear but I'm not sure.
Did I get this right? a guy buys a 3000 dollars paramotor from aliexpress, does not trust biners, they turn out shaddy...does he still trust the paramotor? ie the ONLY skimped on the carabiner?
I got some autolocking "climbing" carabiners from amazon. Didn't take long before I realized they definitely do NOT autolock. Definitely don't recommend anything but 100% reputable sources.
Amazon is literally just the us version of aliexpress so its not any better AT ALL. Everything on amazon is junk unless you are looking for specific brands and even then you take the risk of buying cloned junk. I stopped buying from amazon back when it became flooded with cloned junk
A 170 lb paramotorist with a middle-of-the-line 50 lb motor would expect to experience 2.9kN of centripetal force in a 3g turn. Given that the force is commuted to the sail through a pair of these, with each one experiencing about half that, 18kn is a 20x safety factor.
To my understanding everything you just tested failed. Most safety equipment is up to 2 to 3 times more than what's rated for. So you can get the longevity. Like a basic letter to 250 lbs can probably do 500 . A soda bottle that can handle 14 PSI can go up to 45 psi.
The Chinese are good at one thing, and that's bootlegging. They will try to copy something that already sells well but make it for far cheaper. The ratings are on there only because the originals have them. In some cases, the Chinese figure out which numbers on there are 'more desirable', i.e. will be bought more often, and they put nutty ratings on just to make their product look better than the original. Nothing of that has anything to do with testing, because testing is exactly what they throw out to make their products THAT much cheaper. And even when copying, they skimp on everything they can to decrease production cost, and in cases such as these, they most likely simply accept higher work tolerances in machining, which is most likely what made the gates on the fakes fail faster than the rest of the biner. The only thing they want to copy well is the overall look of the item, and because they have absolutely no clue about how a biner should be manufactured properly, and what parts of it you COULD skimp out on and which parts you ABSOLUTELY SHOULDN'T, you end up with those dangerous fakes, because if they find that manufacturing one part in a way that makes it fail faster costs them far less money than making it closer to the original, they will. Ignorance and greed.
Very good advice: My late cousin was a buyer for an American consumer products company buying from China. In one case, the assembly line was provided with the correct materials, but they converted them by selling the good paint and substituting paint containing lead. He found out that even when he went directly to the factory after clearing customs, they had watchers at the airport and got everything kosher before he could arrive. In another case he got an unexpected response when he complained. The factory owner was unaware that there was a graveyard shift at the factory making black market products. They let it run only long enough to document the activity and suppliers/buyers before sicking the authorities on them. The owner was grateful for the complaint because he was not charged with counterfeiting since he brought the evidence to the authorities. China is still a wild west territory with shady characters working the angles. Corruption is always a problem, even for reputable companies. Bribes only work so far. Screw someone important and the 'protection' vanishes.
Ali and wish are obvious as they specifically peddle in cheap off brand garbage. Amazon is also true but that's because of how the binning system is if 2 sellers are selling the "same" item they are stocked in the same place and picked/shipped synonymously. So you can get knock off or fake products from the original producer as Amazon just doesn't distinguish between the real and fake versions.
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Thank you so much for this, I fly paramotors and I was point loading the bottom corner of my carabiner with softlinks. Thanks for making me safer!
Respect for this guy for donating. We all love and appreciate the content, but not all can afford to donate.
Glad it helped. Thanks for the donation!
I bet those AirXtreme biners had a 7000 series aluminum in the locks when they were rated and somewhere along the way someone decided that 6000 series is close enough.
Ryan needs to find a friend with an XRF machine for alloy analysis!
It's amazing how many people over such a wide range use ropes an clips an pins,.
Rock climbers, tree fellers, sailers, fisherman, SeaMen, airmen, really bringing us all together Ryan, thank you my man 👍👍👍
Ryan is like a giant sexy bumble bee, he goes flyin 'round cross pollinating all the sports
Only difference one is a hobby other a job. Soon as you get into working environment the equipment change substantially. Aluminum is avoided like a plague, you rarely see much color and ratings are part of the equipment and not painted. Dont know about USA but in Europe there is a second layer as these kind of equipment come with certification from government oversite. Without it you cant use is in work and even end up in jail for reckless endangerment using uncertified gear.
@@scasnywell I commercially fish lobster and other critters, an I'm a big user of the 3twist rope, this is all very interesting stuff the braided ropes
Clearly we need you out on a paramotor with a linescale to check the expected loads
Make sure Scetchy Andy is hanging off the bottom with a parachute to do the world's first "base jump from paraglider"
”Worlds first” LoL that been done s zillion times for atleast 20 years or more…
@andrebandarra has a load measurement device for paragliding, could be a nice collab 👍🏼
Just send one to tucker gott
Would be cool to use a linescale to measure the actual forces while paramotoring!
I sense a new crossover episode happening.
th-cam.com/video/7c4PzV1oBjs/w-d-xo.html
th-cam.com/video/qi2dxPC1aCg/w-d-xo.html
@andrebandarra has a neat setup to measure these 😉
i sense the results would be underwhealming
I know nothing about paragliding/para-motoring but the takeaway I got from this episode is that these folks should stop trying to reinvent the wheel with these oddly shaped carabiners and just use steel quicklinks.
For real man, those mallions are tested by decades of use across tons of industries.
I was wondering about using a backup loop of something like dyneema
But they are heavy and hard/cumbersome to open, and most pilots diconnect their wing after every flight. Some Hike&Fly Pilots moved to Softshackles and leave their wing and harness connected, but some already are moving back to something like the Edelrid Ease (19G with a Locking Insert). And they usually use more narrow webbing as risers, compared to PPG wings
Seems like itis only an issue if they are using straps that are too skinny though. Probably want your wide, flat straps to not be bunched up with a normal shaped quick link or carabiner?
@@mrdumbfellow927 They make quick links of every shape, not just the ones we see in climbing
A guide at an adventure company I was working at dropped three brand new aluminium carabiners about 100m onto rocks. No visible damage but we tested them all. They were all rated at 30kN, two broke at around 10 - 15kN and one failed at 1.2kN.
We did the same test with steel carabiners that had also been dropped (this time deliberately) and they all deformed at around their rated strength. We found every time aluminium breaks suddenly whereas steel deforms, the gate pin breaks and they slowly bend. Even a bent one is still strong enough to hang on. The company went to all steel carabiners the next day!
For personal use when you know the history of your gear aluminium is great, but when used from a common gear pool where you don't know what happened to it yesterday steel is the only logical choice.
But warning, stainless steel is less predictable! It can work harden and break suddenly.
Aluminum also has a finite fatigue life -- all fatigue adds up until eventually it fails, even if that is a very long time. Steel fatigue under a certain threshold doesn't add up, and thus lower the time/fatigue cycles to failure. (One reason for the inspection and replacement cycles on airplanes -- it's designed for it obviously, but makes fatigue engineering and maintenance very important.) (EDIT: Sorry, I typed that before he talked about it in the video.. :)
Aluminum carabiners - you can use it for holding less important items than your life. I use one as a keyring on the belt to avoid having my keys cutting up my pockets.
Stainless steel does Work harden, but you already have to be at yield stresses to do so. So if it’s never opened up or has obvious peening on the surface it’s not hardened. It’s not something that can happen “invisibly”
@@geekswithfeet9137 Carabiners and stuff yes but we had some stainless steel wire ladders that some idiot thought would be useful in a commercial cave trip we were offering. The wire broke at where the rungs had been swaged on where the bit that could flex met the bit that couldn't, typically a quarter of a millimetre in to the swage. The only way you could visibly examine it was to flex it and look for any broken strands, but flexing it only hurried up the work hardening.
The other nasty one was a stainless steel threaded pin glued in and an eyebolt on it for a rope anchor. Another idiot had installed it and found it was a bit too long so put a nut on the pin under the eyebolt. As people abseiled on it you could see it flexing back and forth. I was a bit worried so cut it down so the shoulders of the eyebolt sat squarely in the rock. And I backed it us as well!
@@mirandahotspring4019 oh yeah completely different story with wire rope. You can get swaging systems that have bell-end entries to spread the strain over a larger radius.
I don't climb or use a paramotor but I love this channel.
I used to teach high school chemistry and physics. I think I love the testing methodology the most about this channel.
Another great video, Ryan. Your content calls to mind the importance of scientific TRANSPARENCY. Something is lost when we are lulled into trusting the results of opaque testing which is doubly suspect when there may be questionable incentives, or when a company is performing their OWN tests. I think your passion and thoroughness are doing more to promote scientific literacy than many programs designed for that purpose...Keep it up!
That's why mammut is such a champ showing their testing machines working on youtube
In electronic manufacturing, chain of custody is required for quality if parts aren't bought from an approved distributor or the manufacturer directly. Seems like the same philosophy would apply here. There's a reason manufacturers don't buy microcontrollers from amazon. ;-)
Hi Ryan!
On ratings- the paragliders themselves are tested to 14kn or more under the EN926 tests! Carabiners that break lower are the weak-point in the whole system.
I'd be very happy to do a video (if there's interest) exploring what the attachment points for the wing and reserve parachute look like, and give a closer look at materials (dyneema, kevlar, nylon etc) for the whole system. Often there's protective arrangements to prevent carabiners moving around or angle-loading on the harness side. On the wing side of the connection though, I think more research is needed, as different wings can have lightweight risers that do not occupy the width of the carabiners.
I'm exceptionally grateful for all the learning from your channel. For example brummel-splicing dyneema and kevlar has been super-useful for gear repairs in the field, but I've learned so much also about softlinks and quicklinks and a lot of the other bits of hardware we use.
Thanks!
Paramotor wings are rated to only 5.25G under the DGAC certification. EN certified paragliders are rated to around 8G (within the certified PG weight range only) and acro wings are a bit higher at 12G. It would be **extremely** difficult and unlikely to achieve anywhere near 14kn of force. We are talking about a very heavy pilot doing serious acro on an acro paraglider. Also there are two carabiners (not just one). Achieving 14kn of force would have much more interesting consequences because not only would other things fail (swing arms, frame attachments), there are **no** paramotor harnesses that are rated for anywhere close to those loads.
Yes, please!
I have seen people have cascades that ripped the lines out the glider.
So yes, very high Gs are very possible.
That would be a great video!
Is there a safer alternative to caribeners? I'll check your page out! 😊
Tucker isn't exactly the pinnacle of safety and good ideas. 😂 Just ask Dell Schanze. Video attached unless links are censored...
th-cam.com/video/KqMgmHZYZHY/w-d-xo.htmlsi=VxrqvHfp7lspWqsC
Bummer, you don't have any videos yet. Please let me know when you do! Have a wonderful week! 😊
Mildly related note: I've noticed a theme of goods and zero liability Chinese goods. An easy hint is names you genuinely believe are made up (because they are). They make a brand, let it get threatened with lawsuits, fold up that name and do a new one. If anything happens to you or your stuff, good luck tracking down the company to sue because they won't exist. This is a feature, not a bug.
It's no surprise to me they'd simply paint over old stock and print something on top. I am not sure how to help consumer awareness as most consumers mind their wallet over their common sense, but niche things like this definitely shine a light on areas some might not presume this practice occurs in. I am grateful for your work!
"Did they get the right aluminum in the vat..." to then forge the carabiners? That's important, but it's only part of what is required to manufacture reliable life-safety gear. "Real" gear manufacturers pull random samples from their production runs, do testing like this, then use statistical analysis to confirm that each batch is performing up to spec (along with lots of other critical steps and checks!)
quality control is everything in mass manufacturing. At the same time, though, the real killer for all aluminum casting is porosity. Dissolved gasses form bubbles when cooling, and create tunnels as the liquid / solid boundary moves when the part solidifies. In a car engine this can mean coolant or oil leaks in a visibly good engine, or in load bearing parts, extreme reduction in max load before failure. The bubbles can become quite large when no degas methods are used. I've seen fluxes and nitrogen bubblers used to degas the metal. The porosity I'm most familiar with is microscopic, which has just as big an impact on structural integrity as the large voids.
Should see how webbing acts when left flat like on one of these square carabiners versus in the curve of an oval carabiner or something like a d-oval. I'd bet that those square profiles don't help at all, and in fact are worse since even fat webbing might slide to the gate side.
"but if you pull webbing into a curve, it is weakened", yeah, well, there might be a reason why climbers normally use tubular webbing. Don't skimp on the quality of safety-critical gear.
@@Alastair510 that's not the reason, and is debatable as a statemement to begin with. I see Non tubular slings and cordalette used way more often, and they can the same or better strength properties.
I'm sure non-tubular can have the same strength, but tubular has a couple of advantages:
1) for the same width webbing you are getting twice as much material.
2) when in a curve, it tends to 'roll' up and evens out the strain, (rather than stressing the edges)
@@tylerlego41
Thanks for the work you do!
I knew it was going to be a fascinating video when I saw you had a pile of the exact same thing.
Any time a test needs that much repetition, something is being learned, and that's why I'm here!
I don’t do much climbing or paragliding, but I do trust my life to fall protection at fairly extreme heights (150-200 feet). I can’t say I’ve ever seen a gate retention system with such little interference as those air xtreme ones.
Before doing the pull tests, make sure to do some NDT (non destructive testing). Dye penetration test would be suitable for finding fractures.
I run soft shackles (5mm dyneema with a button knot that i learnt on this channel) as my main PG attachments. Reason being is you can't cross load them, they're not susceptible to fatigue, they're lighter than the alu or steel equivalent and should have way more strength than needed.
Just wish i had a line scale and a slacksnap setup to proof load them 😅
Paramotor or not - harness needs to hold a man. Good collab.
There has to be someone who knows someone who can get this guy a high speed camera. Would be fun to see exactly how stuff comes apart!
A lot of this slipping is why i fly with D-Shaded Carabiners on my Paragliding Harnesses. 09:07
I also fly with very narrow attachment points (on both sides) so having the D-Shape from a standard climbing carabiner is doubly useful. I can share some more information for non-paramotoring paragliding carabiner use 😊and carabiner attachments.
This channel steered me towards soft shackles forever. I had an old chunk of synthetic winch cable and made a few up. They fit so nice in a pocket. Easy to set up even wearing gloves , no potential metal flying around and not had one even come close to fail. Right from the beginning of the video all I could think of is why they wouldn't use them as a back up to the carabineers or instead of for a paramotor.
Fascinating! Paramotoring just seems inherently more dangerous than climbing, seemingly with piloting errors leading to the majority (?) of accidents. The sport is so niche, I wouldn't be surprised if catastrophic failure of a carabiner has never happened, even with these bad carabiners on the market. That said, as the sport evolves, it's important to have discussions like these. Having two points of "undundancy" definitely seems like a mistake.
I don't know about flying paramotors (outside that a propellor on the ground or on your back is scary), but as a climber and paraglider pilot I don't see much of a difference. Climbing accidents also happen from mistakes mostly (inatentive belayer, wrongly used material, etc.). (((Funnily enough, climbers keep asking paraglider pilots 'Isn't flying very dangerous?' and pilots asking climbers 'Isn't climbing very dangerous?'. I usually answer that climbing, flying, and playing table tennis are equally dangerous if you do it like a madman.)))
Paramotoring and paragliding are way more dangerous than climbing (based on the percentage of severe injuries per 1000). But its not due to carabiner failures. Most are take off and landing accidents.
Thanks!
Using a quick-release device where a quick-release device has no business being makes as much sense as seatbelts on skateboards.
I notice at 7:25 how the failure of the thin gates is always preceded by joint rotation, creating a large lever arm on those little grips.
Kinda strange that you have a community and (be it a small one) industry making their stuff flying and they went with having two single points of failure instead of the usual airospace approach of "how many times redundant can we make it". Wonder if anyone is counting accidents.
Finest Chinesium, terrifying stuff.
Can you reach out to the companies and get the standard(s) they are tested to? And try and emulate the same test setup and procedure?
This was by far one of the most interesting videos and Ive watched you destroy a lot of stuff.
That red one, at around 12:24 into the video did it just right; held up for about 10 % MORE than its rating 👍💪👍.
...and two more after that... I like those.
Just the shape of those air extremes make me suspicious. You get the strength out of aluminum carabiners because they are designed to focus the load typically on the non-gated solid shank side. The pin on the gate has leverage so it never sees the full load.
Being square I don't see how the air extremes control the load to use the strength of a shank. In fact as noted in the video the location of the load under load is somewhat random. Good designers don't like random.
This is actually a fraud. I'm just wondering when that company is going to be sued.
Thanks, great episode! I do paragliding (not paramotor) many gliders use soft shackels instead of carabiners for weight saving. Also many gliders got regular Edelrid locker carabiners coming with the wing.
Side note, pls hook up 2 linescales to the raisers of a paraglider, do spirals and se How much force you get!!! Would be a FIRST in paragliding history and very exciting to see!
Very interesting that basically everything except the "legit" Air Xtreme in steel broke at or above their rated strength when loaded with a straight pull, even including the somewhat questionable brands. Great results, and would love to see how the fatigued ones do!
That is likely why the guy prefers the steel ones because they might have a lower breaking point but aluminum is softer so it will stretch and fatigue at a lower rating but not actually break... but a failure is still a failure.
The ones where the pin blows out of back of the gate, I would really like to know what just a little bit more meat back there would do. 19 kn out of the alibaba clip and the pin rips though? don't cut it so close back there and that thing could do like 22 kn...
I for one can not wait for the HowNOT2 carabiner production series in 5 years. You've just had the ultimate R&D cover and have a drawer of designs and specs to storm the market with the perfect design 🤣
Get a price of cordura off of an old backpack would be a good place to check for it. Cut out a rectangle, sew Velcro to each long side one front one back of course so you can close it as a tube you can wrap around your slings as needed to protect them. Cheap, effective, easy to make and easily replaced.
Thanks! This weekend doing Acro, I landed in my wing and the forces on my harnes after the rescue opening was AT LEAST 1500 kg ripping some of the stitching on the harness and some metal pieces (which is plenty strong enough in normal situations). with a normal harness i would likely have fallen out of it, but this one had backup straps behind. my friend say that I pulled 17G's when the rescue opend..
this again adds the question about the carabineers/softies used between harness and rescue.. but this should be more simmelar to climbing..
also, doing tumbling, its normal to pull higher G's than 3.. usually about 4 when in infinity and close to 7G's in entry.
What would be wrong with just using round stock (climbing) carabiners instead of those boxy ones in paramotoring?
I assume that since the straps you are attaching the carabiners to can be quite wide as shown in the video then the straps would get crunched up and not lay flat which would cause stress points.
@@dumbcrumb879 sounds like another test for Ryan! But also he pointed out they were using a lot of 1” webbing so I’m skeptical there. Steel oval carabiners or HMS style would be wide enough, I’d think.
I always figured that in turbulence you could get dynamic unloading and a square is harder to get webbing to move to cross load than it would be on an oval/ pear
you should pop in a thermal cam
It's common sense to not buy biners and the like from Chyna, but it's still valuable to have the lesson visually demonstrated.
I'm not fully cognizant of how the 'wing' works, but it's basically a parachute right? If you lose one out of two attachment points, doesn't that end just fly up uselessly and turn the whole 'wing' into a rope dangling above/behind you:?
I have always wondered why they don't back up with a soft shackle for years now
We have a back-up, it is called reserve parachute…
I'll never buy biners with wings instead of hooks after watching this. And I want a paramotor.
Awesome content, tack
Great episode 😊
Don’t fly but watch Tucker
Wish I had more time to Climb but live vicariously though you both. Hope to see sum fall Big wall living footage soon 😊
You just opened a can of worms matey.
We need you to test how much force UNHOOKED KITELOOPS generate. Also paragliding spiral dive with the risers on dynos would be sick to see
I'm UK based, but surprised you wouldn't trust rated gear from Walmart. I'd expect them to have decent supply chains etc. In the UK, we don't really have big box stores of the Walmart model, but we do have budget sports retailers, like Decathlon. I've always assumed that, for rated gear, they are fine, because there are standards! 😅😅
Walmart is unlikely to have rated gear, but I would agree that if they were selling something rated it'd be trustworthy.
@@B-System huh. You wouldn't be able to get unrated gear at a shop like that in the UK (except shitty little beenas for stuff like your keys, which nobody sane would climb on)
That was from Walmarts market place was what he showed which is like Amazon don’t trust anything on there more then you’d trust aliexpress
You should do machinist 4 part die Crack detection on the stressed aluminum
Thank you so much for this video, I use soft links to connect my carabiner to my paramotor so I point load the low side of my carabiner. This video shows that I need to change it so it is using a full width webbing. Thank you!
As a rock climber the benefit of aluminum vs steel is the weight that you are hauling up the cliff as you climb. Since the para-motor is doing all of the work I don't see the benefit of using aluminum other than maybe aluminum is cheaper? but the cost/weight savings for two carabiners is minimal if your life is at risk of use over time. Two new steel carabiners every 5 years also seems reasonable.
on another note climbers use two opposite and opposed at the master point of anchors.... are the loops big enough in para-motors to do the same? idk I don't para-motor
So is the lack of backup like part of it? Do they get more out of the flight knowing that if something breaks there's nothing backing it up? I'm only kidding.
What I'm actually curious about is why the parachute flyers seem less concerned with redundancy.
Why aren't they just using the steel D biners? Seem they'd have enough geometry to meet their needs.
The multiple-stamping impression is from a "pad walk" where the stamp pad in a pad printer has been moving around picking up ink in different locations instead of being refreshed cleanly for each stamping. It makes a huge mess of the result. Here's how such a machine works, and you have to either have a fully automated machine with product feeder or be asleep on the job to do such a bad job... th-cam.com/video/aZFfcA8v88U/w-d-xo.html
A thermal camera would be interesting to watch as these bend an snap 11:27
Amazon and other retailers need to be held accountable for selling products like these. But they won't.
Coffee and watching stuff break.... happy Wednesday.
There are only a few actual carabiner manufacturers in China; if you are talking about a vat of AL, then you are talking about cheap poor, quality keychain units which will snap under a load of a flower pot full of water; these are made by backstreet vendors who have zero QC, and would mix the materials and mostly likely never pass any standards, you never know what old crap is mixing from wheels from a pram or stolen gate posts from Chornobyl.
Actual manufacturing is using 7075 AL purchased in long-length rods, which are supplied with a certificate of manufacturing to a quality standard of GB/T 3191-2010
These rods are cut into lengths and bent to approximate the shape design of the carabiner to be produced.
They are then hydraulic stamped into shape, polished for a smooth finish, then powder coated using Japanese paint conforming to GB/T 3191-2010/
The logo is laser etched with model code and production run details, which can then be tracked to the original batch rods used.
Sample testing per 1,000 to destruction to meet qualifying kN ratings is registered against each production run and kept in a log.
This channel is terrific, and I hope you keep strong and healthy due to your recent episode. Bless you, and take it easy.
Hi! Thanks for the subject! You could also test the Maillon Rapide Delta (often 3,5mm - 4mm) used for line attachment to risers: These are very exciting to watch open up and/or deform in flight (i.e. when not properly closed... especially exciting when it is a middle A-line: the most loadbearing). Happy landings
That sounds like a fun episode. Didn’t they run an episode on soft shackles from parachuting already?
So this is why climbing gear is certified--small things like the insufficient lip to keep the gate in place would have probably been caught if this was certified.
15:58 -- didn't break in the knot!? How are you all not instantly opening bottles of champain ? 😂
It's quite easy to pull more than 3Gs in a spiral.
Paramotorists don't think, they are mostly a special breed of knuckle draggers, who think trying to fly the slowest aircraft in the world everywhere on the throttle is a good idea.
The Paramotor was designed to be a mobile hill, and used just like a Motor sailplane - power into a thermal, then go onto tick over, and only power back up if you cock up and need to climb again.
super interesting, thanks for the vid. Still digesting the information. I've always stuck with the alu that is supplied with my harnesses, but maybe I should replace them more than I have.....but maybe its also time to learn soft links.
Why no soft-shackles? A lot of us (paragliders) are changing wings or removing them multiple times a day. Between changing wings, storing wings separately from harnesses and other reasons its convenient to be able to use a carabiner. If you think of a Tandem Pilot who easily can have 10 flights with 10 passengers a day being able to easily attach and remove your wing from your harnesses is quite useful.
Additionally having many multiples of webbing around a soft-shackle makes it hard to do a pre flight check to see if everything is correct. Two types of webbing attached on the opposite side of a metal thing is just easier to confirm.
Finally thinking of redundancy: Most rescues are attached at a separate place on the harness (i think to remember that this is also true for paramotor-where they are attached to the motor side of things but don’t ask me 😅). My rescue parachute is attached to the back of my harness with two loops of webbing (the one from the harness and the one from the parachute) connected by using the webbing only or by using quick links.
So if a carabiner would break i’d throw the reserve and rely on a separate attachment point to get me down safely.
Then why not back it up with 2 carabiners on each side?
@@SonnyKnutsonbecause one is usually super good enough when replaced after a couple of years (5y or 500-1000h should be fine). The incidents where broken carabiners where reported were way past this. Also the loops usually wouldn't fit a second carabiner.
Theres usually no space to attach two
Have you ever used a soft shackle? They are incredibly easy to install and remove.
Actually i fly with quite a few soft-shackles. They attach the individual lines to the risers.
However some harnesses have 4 or even more pieces of webbing going into the carabiner before you attach the gliders risers. And on hard stuff these things being wrong are easier to spot,@@Xanthroid1.
I'm half way through and this is the data I've wanted to see for decades. I hate that notch design on those carabiners. It just looks weaker. There is no UIAA certification markings on any of those sketchy carabiners and I don't know if there is a paramotor carabiner certification. Can you double up carabiners on each side? Those flat sided gates look like they are designed to be side by side.
holy snapping duck $#!t batman.
If it don't spec up , it don't spec up.
.
some of those gates look dodgy as hell
Scary as F, consistently inconsistent. Thank you for the efforts, keep up the great work.
That was damn neat
I use a 25t u shackle on my 225 excavator ☝️And wish isn't the first place I'd go 🤦❗
I'll never do paragliding but I would totally back up with the soft shackles.
In one of your prior videos, you and Bobby stressed over and over “buy rated gear”. And that will not necessarily be found at the cheapest price.
As a climber i dont really get, why those carabiners are not backed up in any way. Maybe there are reasons that i dont understand, @paramotorGuys plase explain
You just accept the risk. Like how you don't back up the biner in your belay device. Generally you're hanging off them but not falling onto them. Second if you want to be redundent your parachute is connected via quicklinks or soft shackles to the shoulders rather than your wing carabiners.
@@medleyshift1325 yeah true, and we sport climb on one rope
sketch afk how many breaking at 50% there "Rated" value
I wonder if the overlapping stamping is done deliberately to try and hid what was there before?
On the stamping, misstamps happens constantly at the most reputable manufacturers in the world. What they do though is either throw them out or sell them off (ideally without their logo) to someone else as B-stock. This is most likely what happened here. These are the ones that got stuck in the printing machine and sold to someone else to recoup some costs instead of just sending it to the trash pile. At the end of the day stamping straight and accurate is a science of it's own, nothing like calling a metal supplier and buying some stock from them.
Who the original manufacturer was is a mystery though, and you should not trust them with your life.
One of your better videos dude! Super interesting enough........(I don't climb OR paramotor, so take my opinion with a grain of salt 😂)
Have you tried doubling them up on each side just so there’s a backup? Seems nuts to not have that already.
Ryan chasing rabits is what i am here for. So pumped for the damaged caribiner break test!!!
You need some kind of tshirt with halfdundant :-)
Best advice was just to add a backup 👍
Steel fatigues too. The difference is that steel has a fatigue limit whereas aluminum does not.
Steel "can" fatigue. ;)
Get a thermal camera. Watching stuff heat up as you pull it would be super cool. ...you probably want to get 2 cheap ones cuz it's gonna get smashed by flying metal sooner or later.
how do they test to get those numbers? THEY DON'T :D they just copy numbers that the real manufacturers use and mark it as EXPORT ONLY illegal to sell or use in their own country :P
I would bet they have steel test fixtures for those that underperformed but weren’t outright lies. That way as soon as the gate stretches the load transfers to the other side.
I am amazed though that Caribbeaners actually break at the rated strength. Every other item I’m aware of needs to test at 1.5x the rating.
man, the box design of those seems inherently like a bad idea! corners are always the weak point, those things deform so fast and then that's it
Nice! You got the video done in time. How did the trip up Ingalls go? Can’t wait to see the angel cam footage.
I should have done the Ingalls video. This took me over 8 hours just to polish haha
:E shit happens, use backups!!
Ayy I surgested you to him!
On my ppg frame the reserve fors to a different set of shackles that are on the arms not on the comfort bars. On my freeflight paraglider harness thr reserve connects to the same shackles that my glider connects to.
As to the soft shackle question as a backup, I think the concern about that was that it might create more wear but I'm not sure.
What about just using a steal “u bolt” like on a car trailer? Cheap and strong with just a small downside of having to screw in the bolt.
Did I get this right? a guy buys a 3000 dollars paramotor from aliexpress, does not trust biners, they turn out shaddy...does he still trust the paramotor? ie the ONLY skimped on the carabiner?
16:51 why cant you add some dynema in a loop backing up the beanz
hahahaa
I got some autolocking "climbing" carabiners from amazon. Didn't take long before I realized they definitely do NOT autolock. Definitely don't recommend anything but 100% reputable sources.
Amazon is literally just the us version of aliexpress so its not any better AT ALL. Everything on amazon is junk unless you are looking for specific brands and even then you take the risk of buying cloned junk. I stopped buying from amazon back when it became flooded with cloned junk
A 170 lb paramotorist with a middle-of-the-line 50 lb motor would expect to experience 2.9kN of centripetal force in a 3g turn. Given that the force is commuted to the sail through a pair of these, with each one experiencing about half that, 18kn is a 20x safety factor.
To my understanding everything you just tested failed. Most safety equipment is up to 2 to 3 times more than what's rated for. So you can get the longevity. Like a basic letter to 250 lbs can probably do 500 . A soda bottle that can handle 14 PSI can go up to 45 psi.
The Chinese are good at one thing, and that's bootlegging. They will try to copy something that already sells well but make it for far cheaper. The ratings are on there only because the originals have them. In some cases, the Chinese figure out which numbers on there are 'more desirable', i.e. will be bought more often, and they put nutty ratings on just to make their product look better than the original. Nothing of that has anything to do with testing, because testing is exactly what they throw out to make their products THAT much cheaper. And even when copying, they skimp on everything they can to decrease production cost, and in cases such as these, they most likely simply accept higher work tolerances in machining, which is most likely what made the gates on the fakes fail faster than the rest of the biner. The only thing they want to copy well is the overall look of the item, and because they have absolutely no clue about how a biner should be manufactured properly, and what parts of it you COULD skimp out on and which parts you ABSOLUTELY SHOULDN'T, you end up with those dangerous fakes, because if they find that manufacturing one part in a way that makes it fail faster costs them far less money than making it closer to the original, they will. Ignorance and greed.
Very good advice: My late cousin was a buyer for an American consumer products company buying from China. In one case, the assembly line was provided with the correct materials, but they converted them by selling the good paint and substituting paint containing lead. He found out that even when he went directly to the factory after clearing customs, they had watchers at the airport and got everything kosher before he could arrive. In another case he got an unexpected response when he complained. The factory owner was unaware that there was a graveyard shift at the factory making black market products. They let it run only long enough to document the activity and suppliers/buyers before sicking the authorities on them. The owner was grateful for the complaint because he was not charged with counterfeiting since he brought the evidence to the authorities. China is still a wild west territory with shady characters working the angles. Corruption is always a problem, even for reputable companies. Bribes only work so far. Screw someone important and the 'protection' vanishes.
Ali and wish are obvious as they specifically peddle in cheap off brand garbage. Amazon is also true but that's because of how the binning system is if 2 sellers are selling the "same" item they are stocked in the same place and picked/shipped synonymously. So you can get knock off or fake products from the original producer as Amazon just doesn't distinguish between the real and fake versions.