When I was looking through previous years I saw a lot of mechanics using this orange or black tubing for moving the balls. I mainly saw this during 2012. I was hoping for someone to try and explain what it is and how it works.
I think you might be talking about surgical tube? Not quite sure though
Most likely you’re thinking of round belts, often called “polycord,” at least on our team.
Or google around for “round urethane belt.”
As Lytigas said, it is typically polyurathane belting, or polycord for short. It comes from McMaster Carr in round or flat. It is much less stretchy then surgical tubing. You can buy it by the foot, or in pre-made belts.
You can melt the ends with a heat gun or flame to weld them together to make a custom sized belt. I’d buy plenty of extra so you can practice welding with some small pieces, and if you make a belt too tight, you can make another one. You can buy tools to align the ends when welding, and to melt the ends, or you can make one. We’ve welded round belts with no gig at all, just hand holding and it works well. Search CD for welding polycord and you’ll find much more advice on doing it well then I can remember right now,.
The guideline I’ve used when making my own belts is to cut the piece 10% less then the length of belt you need and weld it together so you get a nice tight fit when you stretch it into place. Thats the amount we’ve used (roughly) and it worked well. You can go a little longer or a little shorter to get the tightness you want.
Round belting- https://www.mcmaster.com/urethane-round-belts
Flat belting - https://www.mcmaster.com/urethane-flat-belts
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One note on this is that flame-melting is not a thing you can do at events due to the no fire in the pits rules, so be prepared to make repairs with a heat gun or other method if you have a failure during competition. (These hold up pretty well, but Murphy’s Law would dictate that if that’s the one repair you can’t make, that’s the one repair you’ll have to do)
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Good point, thanks for the reminder.
One thing to be aware of: Polycord/belt can wander around on your shaft, so you need to think about how you’re going to keep it from doing that.
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