From DDL Wiki

First Report

We received your report on the active climbing cam and were impressed with your work; however, we wish you had made your conclusions and recommendations more clear and up front. Detailed comments follow:

• In our company (and in most companies that we know of) the executive summary typically outlines your conclusions, not just a summary of what topics will be discussed in the report. This would be helpful for us in the next report, since our executives typically do not have time to read the full report.
  • Ans:We have edited our executive summary. Please refer to the main page.
• You made an interesting observation that skilled climbers typically place, while less skilled climbers remove. Does this have any specific implications for the design?
  • Ans: Less skilled climbers need a more intuitive design compared to skilled climbers. For example, we came up with the crack caliper idea to familiarize less skilled climbers in using the right size of cams for certain sizes of cracks.
• How is the design strapped to climber when not in use?
  • Ans: The design is strapped to the climber by a carabiner when not in use.
• We appreaciated your description of functionality, but we found it somewhat hard to understand without picture or diagram. The assembly photograph you included later was helpful, but we found it somewhat difficult to cross reference each part name.
  • Ans: We have edited our page and moved the assembly photograph before the description of functionality for better understanding and cross referencing.
• It was not clear to us what you concluded from your DFMA studies – Do you recommend any or all of the suggestions you made in the table?
• In your DFE analysis, you commented on the feasibility of recycling the product at its end of life. Do you think this is realistic? Where would our climbers take the product for recycling?
  • Ans: Recycling climbing cams are realistic. We have done some research and found out that retired cams can be returned to their manufacturers for research and recycling.
• In your FMEA we were surprised to not see any failures due to the climber attempting to force the equipment into a difficult crack, damaging it, or getting it snagged while attached to the climbers harness and not in use. Do you think these issues are unlikely or unimportant?
• A free body diagram would help in analysis of function and discussion of what happens in a fall. Please include such a diagram and a numerical analysis to get an estimate of the factor of safety and components that receive the most stress.

Additional Comments

It would be useful if the prefaces to each section contained a bit more generalized information, and if more conclusions were available in the executive summary and in the individual sections.

• • Ans: We have edited our page to included these suggestions. Please refer to the main page.

Revision

We received your revised first report, but we were not able to find your responses to our comments directly. We would like you to respond directly on the “discussion” page and let us know as soon as you do so. We found a force analysis in your second report, but a free body diagram of an individual cam, including reaction forces, normal forces, etc., would be helpful in analyzing the product, and we would like to see this analysis as part of the revised first report. Finally, there is no need to keep a separate “1st report” page, since the full page history is recorded on the wiki.