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ho...you can not clip into the glueins. that is a major drawback of efficiency with this types of anchors..I have to rap in, placing gear while drilling the holes. Rick loaned me removable bolts for those spots that won't take trad gear. Once all the holes are drilled, you then have to jug back up and install the glue ins on the way up...

clearly stronger, and clearly a bigger pain in the a** to install...

rick

kevin daniels here
i have been the US distributor of FIXEhardware for 14 years. you know who i am

i am interested in talking with you about this post. i have many questions for u

please give me a call

kevin daniels
FIXEhardware
760 873 7505

i would like to talk with rick before i respond to his post

pigsteak wrote:ho...you can not clip into the glueins. that is a major drawback of efficiency with this types of anchors..I have to rap in, placing gear while drilling the holes. Rick loaned me removable bolts for those spots that won't take trad gear. Once all the holes are drilled, you then have to jug back up and install the glue ins on the way up...

clearly stronger, and clearly a bigger pain in the a** to install...

What pigsteak didn't say here is that the removable bolts are also a pain. They are small and only require an unobtrusive 5/16" dia. hole. But, too often they are impossible to remove.

A couple days ago, another idea was suggested for a temporary bolt. This is made by Titan fasteners and can be easily screwed into a 3/8" dia. hole. It will resist several hundred pounds of force. Not enough for an anchor bolt, but more than enough for a temporary. Put a hanger bracket on with one of these, then remove it and plug the hole when finished. It will hold you to the wall while the epoxied permanent bolt is curing.

Just had a nice long chat with Kevin Daniels, the U.S. distributor for Fixe Hardware. Kevin has years of bolting experience and is very familiar with bolting hardware and practices in Europe. He has some concerns about the Titt bolt, and I encouraged him to post those here to give perspective to this discussion.

I also wanted to clarify a couple points I made about Titt/Fixe glue-in bolt comparisons. The Fixe 5-inch glue-in bolt we tested in tensile pull last fall, failed at the weld near its full rating of 36 kiloNewtons. (Our test equipment in the fall was not nearly as accurate as our current setup, so "near" means it was very close to its full rating and probably exceeded it slightly.) We tested the Titt bolt only to 25 kiloNewtons – the max. UIAA force specified for rock anchors. It should be clear that the Fixe glue-in bolt is much stronger than the Titt bolt. And the second point – the Fixe bolt epoxy bond never failed at its rated strength of 36 kN; nor, did the Titt bolt epoxy bond fail at its rated strength of 25 kN.

There is another important concern that Kevin and many of us have about the Titt bolt, and that is its resistance to deforming over time due to heavy falls being taken on it. We talked about conducting a test with say 100 simulated falls on a Titt bolt. I think we can do this fairly simply by first determining the maximum practical load that a human falling can take without sustaining injury. There are numbers out there; it’s a matter of finding something credible. Then, as Tomdarch points out, this figure would need to be doubled to arrive at the load that the bolt would be subjected to in such a fall – call it force “x.â€

Kevin Daniels also pointed out something I had forgotten, and that is the Fixe Triplex bolt is removable, and therefore can be used in the 12 mm or 1/2" dia. holes drilled for the glue-in bolts. After all the holes are drilled, the developer can lower off with the rope running through the Triplexes and, one at a time, remove the Triplexes and install the glue-ins. Piggie - would this work okay? On steep overhangs?

Rick

I think this is all cool stuff! And, while I don't think the strength of the current expansion bolts is really a problem, the longevity of the glue in's looks very promising. And, for replacing current bolts, the glue ins wouldn't be as much of an issue, since you can use the current bolts for directionals. The only issue I see is keeping people off of the route for the time it takes to cure.

TradMike wrote:An epoxy anchor in a roof might not be the best scenario. Read some of the info from the Bid Dig ceiling panels. Because of this failure, engineers will never use epoxy anchors to hold up anything in a pullout only loading scenario. Shear loading is OK but not pullout. Epoxy performance is too sensitive to minor imperfections during installation. A small mistake can result in a huge loss of strength.

http://www.boston.com/news/traffic/bigd ... re/?page=1

http://www.mass.gov/ig/publ/catboltr.pdf

You may be right. Especially, if the bolt is installed incorrectly, as was the case in the Big Dig project. What kind of bolt would you suggest using in a roof?

I was in the Indy Hilti store last month talking to them about the Big Dig roof failure. They not only assured me that it was NOT a Hilti epoxy bolt that failed in Boston, but that Hilti in fact provided the mechanical bolts that were used to help correct the problem. They showed me one of these monsters, which has carbide teeth at the tip that expand outward upon installation to bore out a larger diameter pocket for the expanded tip to nest into. Pretty sexy including the price of $50 each.

Rick

Just something to think about...

We all know of routes where the initial bolt placement was less than optimal. With the use of expansion bolts, the problem was fairly easy to correct - take off what you could and pound the rest into the rock. The hole could be filled and disguised and a new bolt placed in the more appropriate spot.

Now if someone screws up a placement with a glue-in...

hack saw bro...hack saw.

Toad wrote:Just something to think about...

We all know of routes where the initial bolt placement was less than optimal. With the use of expansion bolts, the problem was fairly easy to correct - take off what you could and pound the rest into the rock. The hole could be filled and disguised and a new bolt placed in the more appropriate spot.

Now if someone screws up a placement with a glue-in...

Good observation.

I use one of the new lithium-ion battery-powered (& very light weight) Dremel tools with a fiber-reinforced abrasive wheel to cut through a 3/8" dia. steel quicklink in less than 2 minutes. Be sure to use the fiber-reinforced wheel instead of the brittle standard one to prevent flying sharpnel.

Rick