Maillon Rapide safety warning

[Inglesport]

A request for inspection has been issued by Peguet the manufacturer of Maillon Rapides after a crack was found in a brand new, unused 8mm standard zinc plated type. Although these are not as popular for caving it might be worth checking your gear. You can read the full notice here https://www.peguet.com/actualites or here https://lyon.co.uk/images/recall_info/peguet_safety_notice.pdf

[Cap'n Chris]

This is becoming a major issue with Petzl; alerts/emergency inspections/design flaws. They need to raise their game as faith in the brand is waning very rapidly.

Thanks for the heads up, though.

[Fulk]

What has Petzl got to do with maillon rapides?

[Ian Ball]

The Petzl 7mm long openers on the Inglesport site are manufactured by Pegeut.


https://www.inglesport.com/product/petzl-p15-7mm-long-opening/

[nickwilliams]

It would be interesting to find out more about this since the wording in the safety notice implies that this is a known manufacturing fault which would normally be weeded out by inspection.

It's also interesting to note that the crack is not on the curved end of the Maillon which is where you would expect the maximum cracking stress to be.

[mikem]

It depends if the crack is in the steel, or just the zinc (I guess).

Petzl just sell them on, along with many other companies.

[Ed W]

Difficult to tell without looking at the real thing, but that looks like a brittle failure to me.  The zinc layer on a galvanized item will be VERY thin indeed, so the crack will be in the steel.  Could perhaps be some form of stress corrosion cracking that may be a potential side effect of the galvanization process (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1350630708002549)

[Pitlamp]

Am I right that this only affect the 8 mm galvanised ones, referred to in the safety announcement? (By this I mean we probably don't need to worry about the standard 7 mm long ungalvanised MRs?)

[Cap'n Chris]

Good point, my bad. Had always assumed (obviously ass/u/me) that it was P 'cos they're in their catalogue and that's who I/we buy them from. Soz.