Isn’t belt drive also a geared drive? I swear you guys can’t see past your own dogma. Lets hope all the tissue paper is swept off the course. 
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Belts have cogs. Blow your nose on that tissue🙂
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I’d like to but it’s stuck in your gears…
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I can kick push my belt diy board, and it rolls better than the maytech hub setup. This is tested and confirmed.
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Timing pulleys are just spaced out spur gears with a belt to drive power over the gap. The belts would be somewhat in the same category as geared drives in top speed and turning/acceleration.
As it stands today, I’m all for belt drives. Hubs might be the future, but they just aren’t there yet. As consumers we don’t see what is going on behind closed doors in the back of someone’s shop, so maybe that future is closer than we realize…
The problem with nearly every belt-driven system I see is that they can’t physically transmit all of the torque the motor is capable of producing. The belt is usually the bottleneck. There just doesn’t seem to be a lot engineering that goes on in regards to belt selection or drivetrain design. But I can’t blame you, because I realize the vast majority don’t have degrees in mechanical engineering. I’m not trying to speak from a high horse and act superior with my “mighty” engineering degrees; that’s just what I see across the industry. I actually spent a lot of time on this problem and have come up with a design that removes the belt torque transfer bottleneck. My single belt-drive goes 30mph and can power up any hill in Colorado at near full speed
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I’ve heard this argument (mainly from Jason), but I never understood it. Assuming you have a beefy 6374 motor with an unbreakable, non-skipping, 1mm wide belt. Why would that transfer less power than a 15mm belt with the same conditions (unbreakable, non-skipping). Or is skipping the only issue when we’re talking about torque transfer?
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Belts do break under extremes but don’t they also save the bearings in our motors…
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My understanding is a stretching belt will be heating up and so the stretching and compressing of a rubber band thin belt would lose a lot of energy making the belt heat up rather than turning the motor even if the teeth aren’t slipping. There might be more to it but that’s my best guess.
Personally have a 9mm belt and a 12mm belt and haven’t noticed a huge difference in efficiency from the change I don’t think but would have to do “scientific” testing to say for sure.
Yea, I just can’t imagine why it’d be worse for torque transfer between a 9mm and 15mm belt assuming both belts aren’t slipping or breaking. At max stretch it should delivering the same torque in my eyes.
Well there’s some energy loss for sure in stretching the belt since it heats up I’m just not sure how substantial that is or how much adding 33% more belt width or whatever it is makes a difference in reducing the stretching.
I’m not sure energy loss always equates to torque loss though. Even then, wouldn’t the energy loss be super miniscule.
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Technically speaking that would also make a Hub system a geared drive. Unless we would no longer define a belt/direct/spur system that had a 16t:16t gear ratio setup as a geared drive anymore.
You should check out @Nowind trampa belt system. I have that with the same Leopards you’ve likely seen him using with his direct drive system. I’ve never had belt skip with it, and I love to full throttle on take off. I’ve also had to come to a complete stop when travelling about 60km/h along a road when a car was pulling out in front of me. The tires are what lost traction, not the belt 
Pretending it’s unbreakable and won’t skip, you’d still have the issue of stretching, although that’s almost non-existant compared to the other two problems that we’re not including in this hypothesis
Imagine it this way, use your pinky to pick up something with some weight in it, like a carton of milk. Now use 2 fingers and so on. As the surface area increases the strain and effort required by each finger is much less. As is with a thicker belt, as you increase the width, the less strain is put on the teeth of the belt, which means less stretching (only if it were an unbreakable belt *).
*obviously if the belt could break a thinner belt is more likely to snap before the wider one as there are less fibers to spread the stretching/load on to.
That’s probably the problem, that people read these stories about how a belt loses X amount of % performance and so on, but don’t understand that a lot of that calculation also accounts for the fact that with thinner belts you just straight up can’t apply a certain amount of force upon it as it will snap.
Just remember that yes the law of conservation does mean that heat is lost energy, however don’t automatically assume that it’s lost through the belt rather than transferred to it. Metal is a great conductor for heat. A wider belt would also allow for more stretching however it requires much more force to do so. A great way you can see this in person is buying some rubber bands and stretching two of the same length, but different width. You will see that the thinner one is easier to stretch and will also snap at a shorter length than that of the wider one.
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Belts don’t stretch. They couldn’t be called timing belts and used in cars if they did.
THEY DON’T STRETCH.
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Nope! They still don’t stretch.
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They do stretch and is the reason you will need to replace timing belts at times in your car…
The only reason for that is tearing of strands. They don’t stretch. They get old and break. Ask any certified mechanic. Timing belts don’t stretch.
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Talking to one… Everything stretches… It’s just how matter works. It’s also just a matter of how much it stretches before breaking…
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Insight Educational Tips With the help of ProTorque, We’ve put together a list of problems and possible causes to help you identify the reason for timing belt failure. Visually examine your timing belt drives for these top 6 failure-causing problems and it could help to prevent your drives grinding to a halt, avoiding unscheduled downtime.
- Misalignment
Misalignment is one of the main causes of timing belt drive failure. Excessive or uneven tooth wear, belt tracking and tensile failure can all be attributed to misalignment. By checking and aligning your shafts and timing pulleys you can increase the life of your timing belts and save yourself lots of downtime.
Sign Up To Our INSIGHT email & receive top tips to get more out of your machinery
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Excessive load If the timing belt teeth are shearing, excessive load is more than likely the cause. Tensile failure and even excessive tooth wear can also be caused by excessive load or shock loads, although the latter is less likely. To cure this problem you’re going to have to redesign the drive.
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Under-tensioned Belt Tooth skipping, also called ‘ratcheting’, is probably down to your belt being under-tensioned. Under-tensioning can also cause excessive or uneven tooth wear and excessive drive noise so use a tension gauge to set the correct tension on those timing belts!
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Weak drive structure If your drive is vibrating excessively or your timing belts are suffering from apparent belt stretch, you could have a weak drive structure. Try reinforcing the drive structure and you could stop the problem.
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Damaged or worn pulleys Damaged or worn timing pulleys will substantially reduce belt life. Worn teeth will cause belt wear and/or damage. Nicks or gouges can cut the belt. Inspect and replace pulleys that show signs of wear.
6 Debris in the timing pulley or drive It’s the most overlooked, but debris can cause a multitude of problems for your timing belt & pulley. Dirt on the teeth can abrade the belt and oil can attack the belt materials. Use a stiff brush to clean off rust and dirt. Wipe clean of oil and grease. Debris can account for any of the above reasons for timing belt failure – so go clean those pulleys and fit a shield to that drive!
A timing belt will eventually fail by loss of teeth in what’s considered normal wear, any other failure reason should be considered abnormal. For a full list of possible failures and the corrective action to take, consult our Timing Belt Troubleshooting Guide to check your belts & timing pulleys.
If you’re talking to one who says they stretch, talk to an actual mechanic.
You can disagree all you wan’t. Stretchy timing belts don’t exist.
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