So this is the Revo and the Revo is symmetrical and looking at it from both sides the only
major difference you'll notice is the catch and that allows you to open the device.
It's perfectly symmetrical on the other side so I can literally hold it in either direction,
load the rope in either direction and provided I do a full circumference of the wheel and
close the device and I can see it exiting from the front on both sides then we have
a symmetrical device with a symmetrical exit of the rope and then literally you can put
it on your harness in either direction, you can only clip it in one orientation so if
I tried to clip it incorrectly I can't actually fit the nose of the carabiner through.
So I can clip it on in this direction or in the other direction it really doesn't matter.
The Revo is symmetrical and it functions as an assisted locking BLA device in both directions.
The first thing you'll notice about the Revo when you load the rope and put it on your harness
is the fact that it's particularly slick to handle, probably the smoothest BLA device
I've ever handled because a lot of them rely on friction and the Revo does not relies on
rotational speed.
So if I'm handling the device correctly then essentially I will never experience the assisted
lock.
I will break the rope by holding it within the sort of jaws which offer a great amount
of friction for a descending climber or if I want to hold a climber statically on the
end of the rope for a period then it's really comfortable to do that but when you bring
the ropes parallel you get a really smooth feed because the rope's running around a wheel
in the centre of the device and then the only time you're really going to notice the assisted
lock is when you've got a plume of slack in your hand and you're about to give rope to
a lead climber and if they took a fall at that instance which would typically be quite
a dangerous point at which to take a fall then as soon as the device gets up to above
two metres per second it locks.
You can see you've got a tangible sort of click there and you can see the jaw move forward
at the base of the device but the plume of slack's free and I've got no pressure on
my right hand at all but I've got good control of the rope.
So to disengage it in that orientation when the rope is loaded I literally just pull down
on the dead end of the rope, that disengages the lock and I can either hold the climber
there or I can allow a smooth descent.
That's a really cool way of disengaging the device when the rope is weighted but if you've
got a situation where the rope becomes slack then I can just do a really short back payment
through the device and that also cancels the mechanism.
So that doubles when I'm giving rope to you as a lead climber and I give you a small amount
I see you go for a lock and I manage to get the device to lock in the middle of that payout
I can quickly do a back payment and just allow the device to run freely again.
If I restrict that jaw with my hand for whatever reason if I'm a novice and I've let go of
the rope and I'm holding onto the device tight it still functions and then once that
jaw is released it clicks into the secondary position so you're safe in either orientations
basically.
If I've got a climber and they want to take a rest they're mid-route but they're pumped
and they want to take a rest I can engage the device manually and then rotate it until
it locks.
The Revo has an assisted brake once every revolution so I can comfortably hold them
with having a firm grip on the dead rope but without actually physically taking the strain.
Coming to market in May 2017 the price is $129.95 US so it's 245 grams and functions
with 8.5 to 11mm ropes and there's really no sort of sweet spot in that spectrum.
One of the key turning points of the design of the device was the texture on the inside
of that wheel so that it would grip a really wide spectrum of ropes but it wouldn't grab
them instantaneously because the test for these styles of devices actually specifies
a small amount of slippage so that it's not an instantaneous stop on the rope and so that
it's a little bit easier on the sheath of the rope.
So the Revo is best used in single pitch climbing essentially so any trad or sport or top rope
single pitch climbing so whether it's indoors or out you know that's where it's best suited.
So in terms of materials we've got an injection moulded catch and then we've got a couple
of injection moulded pieces that are inserted in the front but then for the most part the
product is hot forged aluminium so the side plates are hot forged aluminium and then
the wheel and all the textures they're hot forged into that component so we're creating
the most elaborate shape with the least amount of material so we're keeping the device as
light as possible and then on the front end of the device you have two investment casted
steel jaws they're the only component that really experiences any friction at all from
the rope so they need to be durable to give the device a reasonable length of life.
The catch that opens the Revo and allows you to remove the rope is on the front of the
device if you're handling the device normally this won't occur but for some reason if you
try to knock the catch and you manage to get it to open which is tricky to do the carabiner
actually secures the device and keeps it closed so you can't actually lose the rope from
the device.
You can only get a couple of millimetres of travel when the catch has been knocked and
the assisted braking function still functions in that orientation.
The Revo was envisaged by a designer based in northern Italy and he unfortunately had
a sort of fall situation with a friction style of device and he's actually a mountain guide
himself so he had a lot of discussions with people about these styles of devices picked
up on all the sort of failure modes and then went back to square one basically, looked
at a tube style device, you know the intuitive handling of a tube style device where you
don't have to grab hold of the device at any point in terms of whilst you're belaying
and then at that point started working on sort of interesting mechanisms and ways in
which to sort of break the rope and this was about four or five years ago and the initial
prototypes of the Revo were enormous I mean they were literally a sort of eight hundred
gram units sort of held in a vice in his workshop but it actually simulated this sort of bi-directional
mechanism so he knew it was possible and then it's in the last sort of two years that we've
got had a team of guys working on it intensely to sort of bring it into a compact sort of
package, you know you are literally just handling the rope, no levers or switches and it's panic
proof so essentially we feel like it's the safest device that's going to be introduced
to the market next year.
