McMaster only stocks urethane flat belting in that “wonderfully” vibrant orange. Googling “urethane flat belt” comes up with a couple of other vendors that sell it in other colors. They also stock the orange stuff, and I was wondering if anyone has any experience buying urethane flat belting from non-McMaster vendors. In particular, eBelting.com. The website lists an address in Texas, which already makes them more legitimate than many of the Chinese vendors I buy r/c plane parts from… :eek:
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I’ve purchased green round belting from http://cadencesupply.com/ It seems like they have polyester reinforced flat belting in green if that’s any help.
I found a supplier last season who had blue round belting, I will search in a bit and see if I can find if they had flat as well.
I see blue belt on the front page, but I think you’d have to call to find out if they have other colors. Seems like a smaller supplier, so I’m not sure what lead times would be like. http://www.urethaneservices.com/
Embrace the orange.
That’s easy for you guys…
Anybody have a good way to melt this stuff together?
A hot plate (with a sacrificial sheet of something conductive on top), then quickly into an alignment jig.
For flat belt, you might alternatively throw something together with a heated vertical plate between the two pieces of belt. Push them into the plate to melt the ends, then remove the plate and push them together. (That’s how many commercial belt welders work.)
For those of us who can’t embrace the orange…
The urethane belting in the US is typically made by Eagle Belting (a division of Fenner Drives). The site http://www.fennerdrives.com/eagle/ has all of the Eagle choices on it. Additionally, there are a number of local distributors that sell Eagle belting. Unfortunately, the only non-reinforced flat belting that Eagle makes comes in that lovely dayglo orange.
As for seal the belting, the site listed above also has welding kits. Many of the kits boil down to a simple soldering iron with a flat piece of 1"x1" 18- or 16-gauge steel attached to the tip. The two ends of the belt are heated with the plate (one per side of the plate) and once the urethane gets to a molten temperature, you quickly slip the plate out and mate the ends together. This could be a two-person job or you could get one of the fancy kits that helps you out with some clamps.
Although it doesn’t help you much, our team started using Eagle Roundthane this past year and everybody loves it (no welding required). Unfortunately, it doesn’t come in a flat form.
A short section of 1 inch aluminum angle makes a perfect alignment tool. You place the two ends of melted belt in the Vee of the angle. If you’re using the hot knife method of melting the belt, make a cut most of the way through the angle in it’s centre big enough for the knife to fit through. We just use a gas cooktop, or in the field a butane soldering torch flame to melt the belt directly.
Graham.
Here is how we splice our belts.