Centering and Driving Flat Belts

[Akash Rastogi]

Originally Posted by ttldomination

For a long time, I've seen teams use flat belts to considerable success (341 in 2012 and 2363 last year), and in an effort to pick as much as I can before kickoff, I was wondering how teams go about driving flat belts?

I know that you need a simple crown to keep the belts centered (so you can run them sasn pulleys). Any tips on how to create these crowns/what works super well? Is there a specific type of tape that the flat belts work really well with?

- Sunny G.

I think the tape used was 3M mastic tape. That stuff is like magic. Feel free to PM Dustin or Jared to confirm though.

[Jared Russell]

We used plain old electrical tape.

[Anthony4004]

Would it be possible for someone to posts a few pictures to show how it attaches with the rollers. My team has wanted to try this before, and this would be a nice help.

[Jared Russell]

Decent picture here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/team341...57628843002609

You can see there really isn't much to it. Wrap the tape while spinning the roller, and wrap more densely in the middle. It doesn't take much to keep the belt centered.

[Anthony4004]

Thanks!

[ToddF]

In the various incarnations of our arms and handlers we drove the flat belts in a couple different ways.
1) using rollers made from 1" OD aluminum tube. Where the belts were located, we wrapped the rollers with 1/4" wide strips of 1/16" thick bump-on adhesive backed urethane from McMaster.
2) using 1" wide crowned rollers that were 3D printed. STEP files for these parts can be found on the CAD models found in this thread. We made rollers for both 1/2" hex shaft and 3/8" round keyed shaft.