Infinity riser wear issue

[JerryBaumchen 1,046]

Hi John,

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Last I heard they built them in house.

I do believe that Lou is correct. But then again, I do not speak for VSE.

Time to get updated

JerryBaumchen

[JerryBaumchen 1,046]

Hi crowbar,

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Now then the risers where stowed the right side grommet on the "cutaway" housing grommet would turn clockwise 180'ish when it laid at rest under the riser when packed.

From my experience with these types of housings, they tend to 'take a set' during the manufacturing process which is what causes this. Most gear builders get these housings & their ripcord housings from a company called Metal-Flex that is located in Philadelphia, PA.

Also, your housings are probably secured with a 'Twin Oetiker Clamp,' see Item #M6909 of the latest Para-Gear catalog ( you can find the catalog on-line ). This clamp holds them 'in-place' very well but that also prevents them from freely rotating. I would think that your problem might be that the production person who clamped them had them slightly out of proper 'rotation' during the clamping process and that is what is causing your 'turn' that is contributing to the wear problem.

You might mention this to them when you contact them again.

I hope that you get it worked out OK so that the problem goes away, never to return.

JerryBaumchen

[JohnRich 4]

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Also, your housings are probably secured with a 'Twin Oetiker Clamp,' see Item #M6909 of the latest Para-Gear catalog...

Link: http://curtb.net/products/10000163/M6909/

[Krip 2]

Hi Crowbar

Lots of theories and solutions, offers for help etc.

Mr Farrington is still the man a good man and as soon as he is aware of the problem I expect he'll take care of your situation like a real professional

BTW Don't mean squat who made the risers, there on his,product. don't need to find your own solution to the problem it's on his rig, Don't need anyone to put in a good word for you to get Mr Mr Farringtons attention.

Be patient The Mtn will come to the customer as soon as he finds out. I expect the customer service rep will get some additional training.

If your dog ate your loop thats another issue

I always wanted a Infinity container but couldn't afford it because I couldn't justify the expense due to the low number of jumps I was makeing at the end of my career.

R.I.P.

One Jump Wonder

[crowbar 0]

All of this you have just mentioned "JerryBaumchen" they were aware of when i talk to them on the phone and when i emailed them... this was all before I sent the rig back to get fixed but was told it was all fine..

[Para5-0 0]

I wasnt going to chime in but what the hell. I do not know the manufacturer or the people over at infinity and can only go off of what everyone has said here, and trust they are squared away.
What I do know is the OP. He is a full time video/coach with exceptional skills. I have never heard a complaint come from him ever. When I saw the frayed loop, I got a sick feeling in my stomach, knowing that he is an avid swooper and flys his canopies hard. The problem I see is, if that loop let go in a swoop this would be in the incident forums not general. To brush this off as him being dramatic is not entirely fair, without knowing a bit of background. For infinity to say if it was going to break it would have broken on opening not on a landing is a weak response at best.
This is definately a safety issue and it was definately brought to the manufacturers attention via email and phone.

I am hoping it is resolved and not just brushed aside. A proper response would be something to the effect of, we are sorry and here is a complete new set of risers, send us your rig for a full close inspection, and maybe we can put out an advisory to everyone to be on the lookout for. Or matbe we need to look at this a bit closer. If the overly dramatic heading saves someones life then the laugh is on us not him.
I am not usually one to vent in public but in this case it was done only after receiving a calous and unsatisfactory answer.

It also appears to be something that has happend more than once.

[KellyF 16]

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If kelly is ok with how it was handled and how is workers can send back a riser that is frayed and say its minor wear and it ok to jump, in my opinion doest care much for his customer safety and that i have a problem with.

I sent the whole rig back and they didnt do the right thing.. Im just posting this so people keep an eye out and this doesnt happen to someone else

Hi Shaun,

I just found your email buried away in Outlook, so I'm sorry I didn't reply to that sooner.

You spoke with Tony, who has been working for me for about 6 years now, and we have been producing our risers with the integrated hard housings since before then. I was in the shop when you called, I was gone when your rig was here, and now Tony is out of the office for the week, so it's been rather difficult to get everyone on the same page. I cannot know exactly what words were exchanged, but it is my understanding that we offered to pay 3 day shipping both directions, among other solutions, but you insisted that we needed your rig here, and that it had to be overnighted both directions. We feel that sharing the overnight shipping expense was a fair compromise since you had put 150 or so jumps on your rig.

The comment about the riser most likely failing during deployment is based in fact- the vast majority of riser failures occur on opening- I can't recall an incident where a riser failed during a swoop.

I would hope that you can understand that no company can be manned 100% of the time waiting for some customer concerns. I think we do a rather good job, but sometimes there will be a customer who just is not satisfied with our efforts.

The grommet from your cutaway housing was saved for me to look at, and I didn't find it to be as sharp as I had expected based upon the information that I had. There was a definite ridge on the outer edge, but it wasn't sharp enough to cut skin. In your first post you mention that the housing would not lay flat upon receipt of your rig. This is normally easily rectified by turning the housing far enough to give it a new set in the clamp so that it lays flat. It appears from your post that you made the decision to continue to jump your rig without getting the housing repositioned. That is what contributed to your loop wearing prematurely. This did not happen in one jump, but over the course of 100-150 jumps. It is possible that your loop wore excessively on the last jump you made, but I am certain that it didn't all happen on one jump, the evidence that I see just doesn't support that. If you can explain exactly how the top edge of the cutaway housing grommet can scrape against the riser housing fitting AND cut the loop in one motion, I'm all ears, and I think the skydiving community would benefit also. We are looking into ways to prevent this, but with thousands of sets of risers in the field, it is certainly a very rare occurrence.

Your #3 picture has some strange ghosting effect going on that makes the loop look like it partially disappears behind the logo on the riser, and makes the grommet look somewhat mangled, also. The fibers that you see on that loop circled on the right quite often show up on the T-2A loop material as it comes off the roll and is certainly not a factor in the structural integrity of the riser. The fibers circled on the left appear to be light abrasion from something rubbing on the loop as it is resting on the small ring of the riser. Neither are structural issues, and neither are related to the loop wear on your right riser, as they are in completely different locations.

As a little experiment, I made a Ty-2A loop (the material that is used in riser construction) and cut it 85-90% of the way through to make it look similar to your right riser loop. I put an 80 Lb. load directly onto the loop and it didn't fail. This would translate to over a 4500 Lb. load on the riser, or about 1000 Lbs. more than average breaking strength of Ty-17 risers. I'm not implying that anyone should jump risers with a loop that is that damaged, but it certainly shows how over engineered that loop is for job it does.

We are here to do our best to keep all of our customers satisfied to the extent that it is possible.

[stayhigh 2]

Most of the rigs out there being used, does not have cable housing that lays flat against riser grommet neither.
That can not be the cause of fraying.
My old infinity had 180 flip on one side of cable housing and my current mirage has both side 180 degree flip to it.

I've seen same thing happenng on my friend's(dropzone id shermantor) rig long time ago, after jumping 200 ish we found the same type fraying on one side of the riser. We did not find any nicks or burr or sharp edges on the housing or the riser gorromet that could conturibute towards fraying.
And that was on infinty ordered in 06 and i have just got my own infinty 2 weeks before his. Vse's response at the time was to send out new set of riser but even on his second set it started to fray just like his old one within 50 jumps, and shortly after that this guy stopped jumping due to his own personal reason.

I am not bagging on vse, since i had one on the past and put nearly 1200 jumps on it without any problem what so ever, and i've already ordered another one, but this rogue fraying riser loop seemes to happen time to time.
And I wonder if any other rig in the market has problem similar to this???

Bernie Sanders for President 2016

[chuckakers 369]

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Crowbar,

First sorry that you had issues with your gear.

Second the metal to metal theory is probably incorrect.
The more plausible theory is the old story of the stamping dies used to set the grommets, have dulled, thus leaving a burr or sharp edge.
These sharp edges are sometimes hard to detect with just a visual inspection.

From the photos that you have provided, I will bet the above is the problem.
I have seen this happen with every major rig out there today at least once in my career.

Sometimes #@it just happens! Just glad that you caught this one!

Also, Kelly Farrington runs a standup business, and probably is (or was) unaware of this situation at his business.
But you know what, I bet a dollar against a donut that this is fixed; Pronto!

BS,
MEL

Yep, just found the same thing last month in the loading area on a Mirage that had less than 100 jumps on it. It had a burr in the cutaway cable housing grommet.

Making matters worse, the broken section of the locking loop was on the side facing the rig, and was lying flat with the grommet on top of the loop. I only caught it because I noticed a slight amount of wear at the edge and looked closer. His gear had already been checked - more or less, I suppose.

Gear checks, folks. Gear checks, gear checks, gear checks.

Chuck Akers
D-10855
Houston, TX

[tonyv 0]

Hi Shaun,

This is Tony, I was the representative that talked with you on the phone. I have read your posts here and have a somewhat different perspective of what happened. Let me start by saying that any product I have had my hands on, if I would not personally jump the gear, there is NO WAY that I would send it to you to jump. The way that your rig left my shop, I, personally, would have no problem jumping it.

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I went to Infinity with my problem, showed them pictures and was looking for them to fix it so that it was safe, and to do it quickly since I depend on that rig for half of my livelihood. The rep I spoke with was friendly enough, but wouldn’t take any sort of accountability for the product that he’s representing. He basically said he’d never seen anything this bad and didn’t believe me when I told him that it happened in one jump.

You are correct, I had not seen a white loop frayed to that point still being jumped before, I was honest with you. Whether or not I believe it happened in one jump, does not rectify the problem, I was focusing on a solution.

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His way of trying to make me feel better was to tell me that if it snapped, it would have happened on opening, never showing concern that the loop shouldn’t have had damage like that in the first place.

I never tried to comfort you about this problem, NOBODY should have a warm and fuzzy about jumping a riser showing that kind of wear. When I talked to you on the phone, you were convinced that it would snap in the middle of a swoop and I merely commented that I thought, if it were to snap, it would likely be on deployment. This was not a statement to comfort or challenge you, but I am afraid you took it as such.

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He didn’t even wait until he saw the rig with his own eyes before he essentially blamed me for letting it get that far. I asked that Infinity pay to have it overnighted there and back for obvious reasons. He nickel-and-dimed me, said that he couldn’t justify the expense. He’d pay for three day shipping, but I had to pay the difference. After paying more than two grand a couple months ago for the container, now I had to pay out of my own pocket to ship it there so that they could fix their own defect.

I never blamed you for the problem, I'm sorry if you feel that I did. Blame does not solve anything, and what I really wanted to do was help you get back in the air with the least amount of down time, within reason. I told you from the very beginning that I would like to inspect the rig. I wanted to check the other surrounding components on your rig to make sure that I knew the root cause of the problem and fix it, so that you didnt have to cross this bridge again in the future. Simply replacing the risers, likely, would not have cured this problem. I offered you 3 day shipping, both ways (east coast to west coast), and you could cover the difference if you needed shipping expedited from there. I maintain my stance that it was reasonable.

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when I got the rig back from them “fixed” they hadn’t replaced anything but the one loop and a single grommet. They left the worn and used riser and didn’t even change my left-side white loop that also was wearing after hardly any jumps. This loop, he said, “showed a little wear, but nothing major. That wear looks to me more like an indication of use, most likely from packing or handling the rig. No biggie.” Infinity states on their website, “There are many requirements when shopping for gear but the two that should never be compromised are safety and quality.” Seriously?? This from a company whose rigger will let a riser out of his factory worn and frayed as if it was 100% ok to jump?! My old Vector risers show less wear after 1000+ jumps than these Infinity risers do after 150!!

I replaced the grommet in the right riser, the white loop on the right riser, and the grommet on the right riser cutaway hard housing. I looked at the white loop on the left riser, and the wear was minimal and looked to be caused due to handling or packing. The white loop did not need to be replaced and the damage was in an area that was not possible to come in contact with the grommets in the riser or hard housing. I cleaned up the very minimal amount of fraying. I would not have hesitated to jump the risers myself and felt that it was no compromise to safety.



When you called me, you knew what the problem was, how to fix it, what the time line of the repair would be, and then demanded that I cover all expenses. You challenged my experience as a jumper and knowledge as a rigger. I didn't want to say more than I absolutely had to, as you were intent on controlling the conversation. You were very emotional and I understand that. Just because I don't show emotion when approaching a problem does not mean that I am any less concerned about the problem, I just want to know why it happened and find a solution. I suppose you did not think my response was adequate as I received phone calls from two other jumpers telling me about your problem and asking why I wouldn't help you.

I would like you to know that I take customer support seriously. I am currently on vacation and my thoughts have been occupied with how to further help you. I apologize if you feel my help was inadequate, we can discuss these matters further, if needed, when I am back in the office on monday.

-Tony
(253) 445-8790
Velocity Sports Equipment

[crowbar 0]

Hey... Nice to finally hear from you, all it takes is a couple weeks and a post on a forum, huh? Anyway, why don't you call me so that we can discuss the multiple issues that we disagree on instead of going back and forth on a forum? If you'd have called me in the first place this all could have been avoided. Tony has my phone number and it's in that original email that was lost in your Outlook.

Blue Skies!

[pilot-one 0]

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Hey... Nice to finally hear from you, all it takes is a couple weeks and a post on a forum, huh? Anyway, why don't you call me so that we can discuss the multiple issues that we disagree on instead of going back and forth on a forum? If you'd have called me in the first place this all could have been avoided. Tony has my phone number and it's in that original email that was lost in your Outlook.

Blue Skies!

If you were my customer I would take the rig back, refund all of your money and send you on your way to someone else.
It is absolutely disgusting that you make smart ass comments such as those above. That is all.

[cornishe 0]

They're all black death, out of 7500 Infinity rigs out there, 7400 have killed or maimed people. 3 of them were even found guilty of rape.

My inventory of student equipment is exclusively Infinity, and if VSE made Tandem equipment I'd be using that too.

What I've learned from coming across this thread is to be sure to send you on your way should you come across my DZ either for work or funjumps until you've had a few years to grow up.

Abbie Mashaal
Skydive Idaho
Snake River Skydiving
TandemBASE

[crowbar 0]

nice one ... looks good

[crowbar 0]

Thats nice to hear im glad your Another person that likes there infinity rigs BUT ONCE AGAIN im not here on this thread saying that infinity is a crappy container I have 2 myself and still jump them as we speak. All im saying is that the way they handled this problem with there hardware was wrong. To temporary fix a problem and send the rig back not 100% and say its fine after being a month old is just bad business in my eyes. Others may think different but all i ask is that kelly call me and we talk about the problem but still nothing. The fact that i had to post a tread to get a response about this is crazy. and the first time hearing from him is not to my personal email or a phone call but on the thread trying to put the blame on me for the cause of the fraying?? come on seriously.. But hey everyone out there has there own opinion even when they have NO clue of everything involved in the situation... You can sit there and say all you want about me ..I do find it real unprofessional that a DZO(Abbie Mashaal) can respond on the forum and bash someone who is just trying to bring forward a problem a company may be having with their hardware ...Hey if I save one life by keeping people more aware of their gear, it being infinity, vector, mirage, javelin or any other company out there then the jokes on you...

[JerryBaumchen 1,046]

Hi Para,

I will never tell you what to do.

However, based upon the ongoing saga and the posts of crowbar; if I were you, I would retract this post.

Just saying',

JerryBaumchen

[hairymango 0]

really helpful comment. Looks like you need to grow up instead of playing around with photoshop

[crowbar 0]

Just wanted to post that Kelly got in contact with me today and was a very understanding guy about everything that was going on.. A lot of mixed information has gone on leading to the uncertainty I felt about their customer care but he has put that to rest.. We are also working on a solution to fix the problem i was having with the risers..I thank him for taking the time to work with me on this.

[mjosparky 3]

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Hey... Nice to finally hear from you, all it takes is a couple weeks and a post on a forum, huh? Anyway, why don't you call me so that we can discuss the multiple issues that we disagree on instead of going back and forth on a forum? If you'd have called me in the first place this all could have been avoided. Tony has my phone number and it's in that original email that was lost in your Outlook.

Blue Skies!

Arrogance is always a stumbling block when it comes to effective communication.

Sparky

My idea of a fair fight is clubbing baby seals

[crowbar 0]

I've meant to update this post after I received the new custom set of risers that Kelly and his team had built for me. I am very happy with the outcome.. Put a good 200+ jumps on them so far and they are real nice.. thank you again.