Gates Belts and Applications

What is Belt Pull?

Friday, May 18, 2012

posted by Michelle at 9:32 AM 0 comments

Belt pull estimates the force a belt exerts on a shaft. It is the force applied to a shaft by the two belt spans entering and exiting a pulley. Belt pull does not account for pulley weight or pulley location on a shaft. While related, bell pull should not be considered to be interchangeable with bearing load or over hung load values.

Belt pull values can be calculated using Gates Design Flex® and Design IQ® software programs, or by using formulas found in the Gates drive design manuals.

Labels: bearings, belt drives, belt pull

Gates PT Toolkit App for your smartphone!

Monday, May 7, 2012

posted by Eric at 3:13 PM 0 comments

Gates has recently come out with the mobile PT Toolkit App for your iPhone and Droid! With the mobile app you will be able to:

Calculate energy savings
Calculate belt drive center distance
Calculate recommended belt tension
Convert unit measurements

The PT Toolkit App is available for FREE at the market place for Droid's and at App Store for iPhone's. The app is not supported on Blackberries at this time.

Watch a tutorial on the PT Toolkit on YouTube:

Android: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qj4lKD6D48A
iPhone: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWND7qnnTr8

New Gates Carbon Drive Belt and Sprocket Calculator

Tuesday, May 1, 2012

posted by Ryan at 10:58 AM 0 comments

If you have been following Gates Carbon Drive at all, you may be aware of the CDX Center Track system for bicycles. This system has changed bicycle belts completely. But beyond the simple performance and size benefits of the system, we are also offering an larger sprocket product line than we have in the past. Because Carbon Drive is 11mm specific, none of our other design programs will help you design for the proper ratio and center distance, including our online calculators at www.gatescarbondrive.com That is until now. We have a new online spreadsheet loaded up that has all of the new Gates Carbon Drive sprockets loaded into it. Check it out at: http://www.gatescarbondrive.com/installation.php?lang=us To get to the calculator, click on the link for Belt and Sprocket Size Calculator listed on the lower right hand side of the screen. Happy riding!

Preventing Potential Pitfalls in TaperLock Bushing Installations

Tuesday, April 17, 2012

posted by Dan at 8:18 AM 0 comments

TaperLock bushings have been in use in the Power Transmission Industry for over 30 years. With proper application and installation, they are highly reliable components. Based on questions that we receive, though, users should be aware of a couple of preventable pitfalls with their installation.

TaperLock bushings are sometimes accused of loosening after installation. TaperLock bushings need a little help beyond bolt tightening in order to grip hubs and shafts tightly. After the recommended bolt torque has been reached, the bushing faces should be tapped several times with a drift or punch in a circular pattern (don’t hammer bushing faces directly). This seats bushings more deeply into the tapered pulley or sheave hubs, increasing the gripping force. The bolts now need to be re-torqued to the recommended torque level as they will have loosened some. This process ensures that bushings are completely and tightly seated so will not loosen with usage over time.

Shaft keys are sometimes not held securely between shaft and bushing key seats and work out over time. They sometimes literally fall out in vertical shaft applications. This is due to manufacturing tolerance accumulations with shafts, bushings and keys so is only occasional. There are a couple of viable solutions. One is to apply a Loctite type adhesive to keys and key seats during assembly. Another is to punch keys several times on each side with a sharp center punch to raise the key surface slightly around the depressions. This will increase the total key thickness slightly enabling compression between shafts and bushings.

To learn more, watch our video on Taper-Lock Bushing Installation.

Check Out Gates Engineers on YouTube

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

posted by Michelle at 2:44 PM 0 comments

In addition to blogging, our engineering group also creates short technical videos. The videos provide Gates customers a quick and simple means to learn about common topics. Some of the current videos topics available include:

Belt Handling
Belt Identification
Bushing Installation
Checking Wear with V-Belt Sheave Gauges
Measuring Tension with the Sonic Tension Meter or Force Deflection Gauges
Strobe Tachometer Use
The Affinity Laws for Pump and Fan Applications
Using the Design Flex Pro Belt Drive Design Software
Using the Online Catalog (PartView)

Check out the videos at: http://www.youtube.com/user/GatesPT

Labels: Gates Application Engineers, Videos, youtube

Do Belt Drives Generate Dust?

Thursday, March 8, 2012

posted by Dan at 10:47 AM 0 comments

Belt drive systems are reliable, require low maintenance and are clean running. It is normal, however, for belts to generate small quantities of dust and particulates during operation. Rubber V-belts, Micro-V, Polyflex JB, rubber synchronous, TruMotion, Poly Chain, etc. belts all have individual and unique dusting characteristics, so “normal” behaviors will vary.

The quantity of dust generated from all belt drives is influenced by many factors including belt type, sheave and sprocket surface finish, drive alignment, belt installation tension or slippage, whether belts are new or used, and others. And not surprisingly, smaller drives tend to generate less dust than larger drives.

New belt drives generate the most dust during the first 24 to 48 hours of operation, and then dusting should taper off significantly. If dusting seems unusually heavy or continues after the initial run in period, this is abnormal and users should look more closely for possible causes.

For small synchronous belt applications that are sensitive to dusting, the Gates TruMotion construction is available on a made-to-order basis. TruMotion belts utilize materials and treatments that minimize dusting, so are well suited for clean operations.

Design Flex Pro: US and UK Version Correction

Tuesday, March 6, 2012

posted by Brent at 12:42 PM 0 comments

If you use Design Flex Pro for US customers, you must check your installation – see below.

Many of the new computer images have the default language/culture set to English-UK. This makes the computer look OK to English-US users, but does not make Design Flex Pro (DF-Pro) work correctly for US users.

Notes required by US legal do not show up correctly for people using English UK.
Some fields used for NA but not used in Europe do not show when English UK is selected.

Once DF-Pro is installed, changing the computer culture will not change the selected language.

Design IQ is not affected as it does not have a separate language for English-UK.

To correct this for DF-Pro:

Open DF-Pro – make sure it is the only copy open
Go to Tools Languages and make sure the language selected is correct for your area. If in the US, this should be English, not English-UK.
Close DF-Pro to make the selection stick.