Belt Drive Design Programs

Design Flex Pro and Design IQ are two belt drive design programs offered from Gates that can simplify the process of designing an industrial belt drive.

Design Flex Pro is used for designing two-point belt drives ( 1 driveR shaft and 1 driveN shaft) and is easy as choosing a belt line, entering in your drive information, and hitting the Design button. DF Pro will then give a list of belt drives that will agree with the input conditions and summarize the information in a Drive Detail Report. This program can only design with stock products offered from Gates.

Design IQ is a more complex program where you can design a Belt Drive with multiple driveN shafts. You can also use idlers and tensioners when configuring the drive. Design IQ gives the user flexibility such as entering multiple driving conditions and implementing non-stock pulley sizes.

Both Design Flex Pro and Design IQ are free programs available to download from www.gates.com/drivedesign

Gates supporting FIRST Robotics

Over the past few years, Gates Corporation has been the proud sponsor of the FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC). The FRC is competition that challenges teams of high school students to create a robot in 6 weeks that can be programmed to interact with other robots to accomplish prescribed tasks against a field of competitors. This program is expected to involve over 45,000 students from over 1800 schools worldwide for the 2010 season. Gates has worked with the organization to help donate belt drive components to the teams as well as provide free engineering support and advice. Gates is truly proud of the work that these students do, and is happy to help support them in this event. To learn more about Gates involvement with FIRST, please visit www.gates.com/FIRST. To learn more about FIRST, please visit www.usfirst.org.

Aircraft Applications

One of the applications that you won't see Gates support is any primary flight related aircraft application.   Sometimes requests to the Gates Power Transmission Product Application department come from homebuilt aircraft builders or designers - they see the weight and performance advantages of a belt drive and would like to incorporate that technology into their aircraft.

Our answer is always "No".   To quote the official Gates policy regarding aircraft applications:

"Primary In-Flight Aircraft Systems:  Do not use Gates belts, pulleys or sprockets on aircraft, propeller or rotor drive systems  or in-flight accessory drives.  Gates belt drive systems are not intended for aircraft use."

Belt inspections will not be able to reveal how much useable life a belt may have left.  While properly designed belt drives are extremely reliable, considering the statistical distribution of belt failures, even a single failure can have catastrophic results in an airborne application.

So - don't use belts on an airborne application.  Don't ask Gates to provide technical assistance for airborne applications.  We'll be polite in discussing the topic with you, but the message will be as discussed above.