
15-01-2002, 20:48
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Registered User
#0686 (Bovine Intervention)
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Join Date: Nov 2001
Location: Frederick, MD
Posts: 28
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From the pain and agony of belts that my team suffered through last year, I would say that the belt is good. However, consider the following:
- What size pulleys and idlers are you going to be using? IIRC, the diameter of the pulley/idler has to be so much larger than the width of the belt.
- If you are going to use belts, order soon! Breco-Flex (as suggested above) takes 2 weeks to make belts and 1 week to make pulleys.
- Again, Breco-Flex isn't cheap. Our belts (double sided, forgot the length, but it was BrecoFlex's minimum) cost $147 ea and pulleys cost $67. The special machined ones we wanted costed $97 ea. Unless you have an 'expert machinist' handy, don't attempt to make the pulleys yourself.
- You need more time to test a belt system. Leave at least one week for carpet tests. We didn't have time last year to test on carpet, which, as previously stated, added a lot of pain and misery when it came time to actually run the robot.
- Buy a DC Clamp-on ammeter. Innovation FIRST let us borrow one for a while at the New York Regionals last year and it helped us debug the drive system greatly. As a note, had an Fluke 36 which costs $250, but there are cheaper alternatives.
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