Quote:
Originally Posted by IndySam
Thoughts?
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WARNING...a programmer / electrical person is attempting to pretend to talk about mechanical stuff...but this is our experience over the past 14 years.
We have done all of this...
25/35 chain
9/15mm belt
Never done gears like you.
So far, we like 9mm belt, but ONLY if its a Bando brand and specifically "Bando Synchro-Link HT belt". DO NOT USE 9mm VexPro belts on the drive system. They break all the time, but the Bando Synchro-Link HT type 9mm, knock-on-wood, we have never broken a drive train belt with this brand and type. The major drawback with 9mm, is you better have a good way to tension the belt. It's not as forgiving as a 15mm. Kinda reminds me of chain. 25 chain seems to want more tension than 35. 9mm and 15mm seemed to behave the same way with us, 9mm will start pulley skipping, like 25 chain does with loose tension.
Example Part Numbers:
900-5M-9 = list price sample $8.68 (weird price example...LOL)
https://www.bandovbelts.com/products...-belt-by-bando
Good resource:
http://www.bandousa.com/html/pdfs/bu-143manual.pdf
We like the 9mm over 15mm because we can narrow the wheel wells up and have alot more space inside the robot generally is why we favor the 9mm pulley setup, because putting a double 15mm pulley on the center transmission output shaft on both side of your robot, eats up alot of real estate in the middle of your bot.
Of course 15mm is recommended by most you will probably find, like talking with mechanical super geeks in Indiana, no names mentioned.. By design, 15mm was included in Rhino tracks, we did not have any breakage problems with this single 15mm Gates belt supplied but it did stretch over time, by the time we got to world champs, we had to change this belt out with a new one because the tension was so loose it was pulley skipping all the time and there was no way to adjust the belt tension in last years Rhino track setup.
I am not sure if the Bando brand 9mm stretched over time, because generally we used tension blocks on the drive system when we have used 9mm on the drive in the past and the pit crew always made sure the tension was correct on the drive belts, so in other words, if it was stretching, I would not have known because they keep the belts tight.
We like belts for sure when possible everywhere.