Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Designing Replacements for Existing Drives

When customers come to us looking for a replacement for a current belt or chain drive, sometimes they do not know the horsepower/torque and rpm of the motor. This is very important for us to know because we try not to design belt drives based on only the old drives ratings.

While we can calculate the power ratings for the old drive, if we design the new drive based on the old drives ratings we are trusting that it was designed properly in the first place. However, it is entirely possible that the old drive was improperly sized because the customer is replacing it for a reason! By knowing the horsepower and rpm of the motor, as well as the components of the old drive we can follow our proven design procedure to give the best results to the customer.

To design a belt drive we need to know:
-Horsepower and rpm of the motor
-Ratio of any gearbox in between the motor and belt drive if applicable
-Desired speed ratio for the belt drive (The old pulley sizes can tell us this)
-Center distance (The pulleys and belt length can tell us this)
-Shaft diameters
-A description of the operating conditions (24/7/365 or high shock loads?)

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