lathe belt

Edited By macmarch on 04/12/2010 17:50:40

Edited By JasonB on 04/12/2010 18:47:53

Edited By macmarch on 04/12/2010 21:50:07

Hi Gordon W

Are the pulleys on your lathe "toothed" to accept the teeth on the belt - I've recently seen a lathe that looked at first sight that it was using a timing belt drive, but while the belt was toothed the pulleys were plain. I suspect the belt was being used for it's higher tensile strength allowing the use of a smaller section. 

You say that the teeth are not for timing but just for drive - sounds as though your looking for the wrong thing in going for a timing belt - you want a "cogged" v belt - very common. They look like timing belts at first sight but the "teeth" are there to give the belt greater flexibility for use on smaller pulleys and top allow a better fit to the pulley flanges. All you need to do is find a suitable section that will fit on to your pulleys. You might find it useful to download the Gates catalogue from here:-

http://www.beeline.co.uk/gates-drive-belts.aspx

and have a look through. Your best bet is to find a local belt stockist - there will be one where-ever you are in the country, and have a talk to them, taking your old belt with you. Once you know what will fit buy 2 - then you'll never need to fit the spare!!!!!

Keith

 

My suggestion would be to skim the teeth off the pullies and take them down to the correct OD to suit easily available 5mm metric pitch belts and cut the corresponding number of teeth to suit that dia.

 

The easiest way to measure the belt pitch would be to count the number of teeth over a given distance, lay it out tooth up on a flat surface.

 

For an XL pitch you will have 15 teeth over a 3" distance

For a T5 Metric you will have 20 teeth over 100mm

For the 3/16" pitch F profile you will have 16 teeth over 3"

Jason

Edited By JasonB on 05/12/2010 13:17:01

Edited By JasonB on 05/12/2010 13:19:41

Edited By JasonB on 05/12/2010 13:23:33