Subject - Removing teeth from the non-drive end of the belt on the ‘X’ & ‘Y’ axis to reduce vibration in the belt due to ‘stepping’ over the bearing, thus reducing interference in the movement of the table.
Hi, it appears from posts from people who have changed the ‘X’ & ‘Y’ axis belt bearings to a toothed arrangement, that this improves the print quality. So I got to thinking, is it necessary to replace the bearing end of the ‘X’ & ‘Y’ end of the drive? Could the same effect be achieved by removing some of the teeth from the drive belt?
The ‘X’ axis belt is 63.5cm long but the ‘X’ axis only has a travel of 20cm. So the teeth are only required for the 20cm + ½ the circumference of the motor drive gear. The same applies to the bearing end. So in theory the teeth could be removed from a 25cm section of the belt (the area that passes over the bearing) reducing any vibration caused by the teeth & improving the quality of prints without additional cost.
Nice idea.
Did you already thought about how to remove the teeth on the belts?
I am not sure if it’s possible to remove the teeth and get a smooth belt surface.
Maybe even teeth are better than an uneven “smooth” belt.
I don’t get any vibrations, although i recognized the “problem” of the teeth moving around the bearing. Unless i got a real good idea to do something without changing them to gt2 belts, i decided to not change a running system.
Why remove the teeth from the belt?
I think that’s a pretty bad idea.
If you want to stick with the T5 belts you can print out a “pulley ring” and sit that on the idler bearing
or better, print a mount for a T5 pulley to replace the “bearing idler” as a whole.
I chose to use GT2 Pulleys on the idler axes instead of flat bearings when i made my GT2 16 teeth pulley mod.
The belts run quite smooth.
@cantax (1st post): I have a quite a good workshop with a pillar drill and a compound table. If I proceeded I was going to mount an abrasive disc in the pillar drill and a bearing on a bolt on the compound table. The belt would then be pulled by hand ‘teeth outwards’ around the bearing, slowly decreasing the distance to the abrasive disc until only the flat section of the belt remained.
I suppose the most appropriate method would be for those who have the milling modification, to remove one belt and stick it to be table with double sided tape and mill the teeth off using the other axis, replace and then repeat the process on the other axis.
The spec for the T5 belt gives the height of the teeth as 1.2mm and the pitch as 5mm. A 625 bearing has a diameter of 16mm. So if circumference = pi d:
with the teeth the inner surface of the belt d = 16 + 1.2 + 1.2 = 18.4 x 3.142 = 57.8 / 2 (as it only runs around half the bearing) = 28.9mm.
teeth removed, the inner surface of the belt d = 16 x 3.142 = 50.3 / 2 (as it only runs around half the bearing) = 25.1mm.
So with the teeth removed the belt is effectively 28.9 – 25.1 = 3.8mm longer.
As the belt has a pitch of 5 mm, if you cut one tooth from the belt you would effectively shorten the total length by 1.2mm. As most people seem to be looking for a method of tensioning the ‘x’ axis belt I’m sure this wouldn’t be a problem.
@ichbinsnur
I can see that there are many other proven options and that inspired the question in the first place. Defiantly an option to print a ring to slide over the ‘stock’ bearing sounds interesting (low cost) and I guess depending on its dimensions so long as it only had a small increase on the diameter it would not require a new belt and would have the bonus of help with tensioning.
However some of the modifications can be somewhat costly and I wondered the same or acceptable results could be achieved via a different approach.
Once again thank you for the replies, more to think about.
