[m3ch4num470r]

Team 449 competed in the Battle o' Baltimore fairly successfully, but in the quarterfinals we snapped a belt, forcing us to compete with three wheels. With mecanum drive. I'm very proud of how well our driver handled the robot in its injured state, but it completely destroyed our hybrid mode which relied on strafing.

My question is, what caused the belt to break? We used PowerGrip GT2 5mm pitch belts from the KOP (Gates Motion), each connecting one AM toughbox to a single 6mm AM mecanum wheel.

The belts endured two regional, including elimination rounds, several community demonstrations, and qualifiers at battle.

We tensioned the belts very well, but no one really knew how much to tension them, so we ended up making them as tight as we could.

I'm really looking for someone who has a lot of experience with belts to explain this. The future of our drive transmissions hangs in the balance.

Thanks in advance.