I have been having some trouble designing a device where there are three pulleys that are connected with the same belt. I am using inventor 2013, and there is no option for a HTD belt, so I’m using the online pulley center to center distance calculator from sdp/si, but I can’t find a calculator that supports more than two pulleys. Does anybody have a way to find the center to center for more than two pulleys?
We use a program developed by the Gates belt company called Design IQ. The interface is a little quirky but once you figure it out it works well. You can put in any number of pulleys and it also allows you configure a slotted or pivoting idler to calculate the pulley position for a given belt length. I’ve checked the calculations several times by hand and by comparing the results to the published tables and other programs and they have always been correct.
You can get more information about the program at:
http://www.gates.com/designiq/
Thanks! This is exactly what I’ve been looking for. The user interface was a little tricky at first, but I get it now.