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CTOMS, a Canadian manufacturer of high angle rescue equipment, just posted an interesting article on their blog in which they describe their in-house test of the JBC Corporation Raptor Buckle. The Raptor is an American-made competitor to the popular AustriAlpin Cobra buckle.
We’ve been doing a lot of pull tests and drop tests lately, validating the operating parameters of our TRACE Comprehensive Capability Micro Rope Systems. During a day of testing, I thought I would pull some Raptor™ Buckles to destruction and measure peak forces, just out of curiosity. We’ve been using Cobra Buckles on our X-Belts and M-Harnesses since the beginning and, keeping an open mind for alternative possibilities, I wanted to validate the Raptor personally. There has been some controversy around them and I figured the best way to sort it out was to to see for myself.
The good news: the buckle withstood 1569 pounds of force before the frame broke. The buckling mechanism stayed intact, for what that’s worth. The bad news: that’s a quarter less than JBC’s own published rating of 2023 pounds. Keep in mind, that’s still plenty of retention unless you’re on one end of a 20ft dummy cord attached to one of these.
Source: CTOMS Blog privatebloggins.ca
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