I have so far mostly been caving in caves that required no rope work. As I come from the climbing side I just used my climbing gear on all occasions when a rope was required. Mostly it was getting up or down not climbable passages of no more than 20 m.

So I know for SRT you use different descenders than in climbing. And I wonder why is that. Can you enlighten me?

Whilst there is no reason why you cannot use a climbing type descender on simple rigging (rope chucked down a pitch) most cave rigging is a lot more complex, requiring more sophisticated gear.  Caving descenders allow you to remove your descender from a rope without removing it from the harness.  This is important as it facilitates passing knots / rebelays etc.

Also, heat dissipation, ease of use, and how well it deals with wet, muddy, and icy rope, .

strutsi said:

I just used my climbing gear on all occasions when a rope was required.

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Be careful mixing your gear up.  Climbing gear has not been designed with mud and grit in mind.  Your climbing ropes and soft year will very quickly get trashed due to the abrasive nature of the cave environment.  Then, next time your out climbing and feeling a bit insecure leading out above your gear, and facing a leader fall, the fact that your ropes are fully of sharp gritty crystals might play on your mind somewhat.

I keep all my climbing/caving gear separate.

Some climbing devices for abseiling will put a twist in the rope (eg Fig 8), whereas caving ones will not. This is important because the re-belay loops on complex pitches will become twisted up and unusable. Devices that are low in complexity will stay cleaner and more usable than fancy gadgets

Climbing belay devices have been designed primarily for belaying, and for use with clean soft ropes. Generally climbing ropes will be less than 10mm. They are often not ideal on free hanging descents, requiring more hand gripping force than a specialized descender.
Caving descenders are designed primarily for descending. They are designed for use with a wider range of fatter ropes (and a fast, fluffy old 10mm caving rope is a lot bigger than a clean 10mm climbing rope). They generally give more braking power than a climbing belay device and.

Whether caving or climbing, figure-of-eights have been responsible for at least one death after being mis-aligned against the screwgate karabiner. It can happen with racks, too.

https://www.theuiaa.org/documents/safety/Karabiner_Breakings_when_using_a_Figure-of-eight.pdf

I was at a demo Neville gave many years ago. It doesn't require much force at all, IIRC he just put his foot in a sling and stood on it.

tamarmole said:

Whilst there is no reason why you cannot use a climbing type descender on simple rigging (rope chucked down a pitch) most cave rigging is a lot more complex, requiring more sophisticated gear.  Caving descenders allow you to remove your descender from a rope without removing it from the harness.  This is important as it facilitates passing knots / rebelays etc.

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You can but whether you should is a different matter!! Many climbing devices are not made out of suitable enough materials to survive the wear of a low-stretch and/or grubby rope (we've had that from at least 2 manufactures following discussions on appropriate life-lining devices to use when instructing).

Thanks a lot for all the information! That helps a lot for a better understanding.