Long Belts
 

I'm wondering if anyone (specifically the good folks at Raider Robotics with their belt lift) can tell me a good source for long timing belt, or a reliable method of joining together straight belts into long loops.

Re: Long Belts
 

Back when 1293 built Ockham, it used long timing belts one of their engineers procured. They made it into a loop using a small aluminum plate that captured the teeth of the belt right at the ends, and then mounted that near the end effector. It appears you can get long timing belt at McMaster-Carr, though it doesn't look to be cheap.

edit: If you look carefully at the big version of this picture of Ockham, you can kinda see the plate behind a bundle of extra belting in the front of the robot.

Re: Long Belts
 

BRECOflex might have what you are looking for but I do not know the cost or how long the timing belts are that they make.

Re: Long Belts
 

As an update, I found a better picture on 1293's website of the same plate with their 2007 robot, Atlas:

Re: Long Belts
 

Take a look at the FIRST Mechanism Library.

You will get bunch of ideas from there. Also as far as fast lifting/telescoping goes, take a close look at 233's 2005 robot and 1114's 2007 robot.

Here is a picture of 233's 2005 robot... http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/photos/20448 ... if you need details feel free to contact the team and ask for drawings. Send a pm to Mrs. P on the forum.

And here is a picture of 1114's 2007 robot...http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/photos/28724 ... again, if you need details, please contact Karthik on the forum. They are good people, always willing to help.

good luck.

Re: Long Belts
 

1024 used belt this year for their elevator. We joined our belt together by lasering out (you could Plasma or CNC too) a pair of brackets with rectangular cutouts through which the teeth on the belt would fit. Then, these plates, two per side for each end of the belt, were tightened down on the backside of the mounting plate for our gripper. The clamping force was plenty, and the belts never slipped all season.

If you need more details on that, let me know.

For a source of very long timing (synchronous or cog) belts, we used McMaster Carr (just search "Synchronous Belts"). For an XL pitch (just for an example) 1/2" wide belt it's $2.59/foot, and if remember right (you'll want to call on this b/c I cant remember exaclty) the maximum length was 30' (might have been 50' can't remember, sorry :o )

SDP-SI is a good source too, but not as cheap for belt. However, they do have better deals for pulleys.

Well... eh... thats all for now.

-q

Re: Long Belts
 

Try www.bearing.com
Also our sponsor. They know everything you could possibly want to know about bearings belts and chian.

Keaton

Re: Long Belts
 

Quite the response! Thanks everyone! (Especially for the FIRST Mechanism Library. I'd never heard of that before and it looks like it just might be gold.)
In case anyone's wondering, I'm playing around with designing a team 25-style lift, just to occupy my brain, maybe convince my team to stop using cable winches.

Re: Long Belts
 

I agree!

Re: Long Belts
 

But ... but ... pneumatic winches are so fun!