I had Salomon 912 bindings on my skis on a recent trip I lost a brake I thought this strange, but I bought a new one on trying to fix it there was no purchase in the thin plate. I thought that it was now stripped due to too much torque so with a bolt and nut I set about dismantling the binding so the nut could be placed on the other side of the plate. Once the plate was free it became apparent why the binding had failed. It was because it cracked in numerous places on this occasion one crack had reached the fixing hole and fatality compromised the thread.
A new pair of binding were sourced and the skis are back in action but closer examination showed the cracks to be on the other binding as well and though the binding had not failed catastrophically the cracks had consumed 50% of the width of the plate. I have images of the plate and I was wondering if others had similar occurrences with Salomon bindings. I have had 3 structural engineers look at the plate who all concur that the cracks are fatigue cracks.
I have measured the strains in a with new binding plate to work out what loads are in the plate when the boot releases at different setting theses all point to high stresses being generated in the plate over 2000 micro strain
From Wikipedia
Fatigue limit, endurance limit, and fatigue strength are all expressions used to describe a property of materials: the amplitude (or range) of cyclic stress that can be applied to the material without causing fatigue failure.[1] Ferrous alloys and titanium alloys [2] have a distinct limit, an amplitude below which there appears to be no number of cycles that will cause failure. Other structural metals such as aluminium and copper do not have a distinct limit and will eventually fail even from small stress amplitudes. In these cases, a number of cycles (usually 107) is chosen to represent the fatigue life of the material.
Has anyone else had a similar problem. Remembering if the binding did fail during a big fall that binding could have been cracked to a high degree beforehand.
