Belt Driven instead of Chain driven

[Hawiian Cadder]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

They do?



And what about the kit frame is imprecise at all? It's not like the kit holes are randomly placed.


Indeed true, though usually belt pulleys don't need separate hubs like smaller chain sprockets do.

Belts are workable just like chain but they require a bit more thought and design than a standard 35 chain drive-train to work. You also have to be careful with belt reductions to make sure you're not putting too much stress on the pulley teeth.

My wording was not as precise as it should have been, what I meant was the kit frame has some weaknesses in that it lacks rigidity. I also have found that the kit frame doesn't tend to stay perfectly square without a substantial amount of additional support (plywood, or larger gussets) so I would choose to use chain with the kit-bot purely because the flexing might cause damage to the belts, and if the frame warps into a parallelogram, the belts will wear out at an accelerated rate.

This white paper does a good job of quantifying the bending problems on a standard 2010 robot. the frame bent enough to throw #35 (i think) chain, so belts would be out of the question.

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/papers/2398