Started some serious cutting today and immediately ran into problems with belt slip on our 1200x1200 cutting area router, we use the GT2 belt with belt clips throughout, I am cutting at 2mm deep, low machine speed on MDF, we only seem to get this problem on the Y axis My questions are: how tight should the belts be? Should we upgrade to the GT3 belt and would this solve the problem?
I am not familiar with your exact build but if the belt is slipping on the stepper drive pulley then idler wheels (which allow for more belt teeth to be in contact with the stepper pulley) may help considerably. Tweakie.
John do you mean the GT3 aka GT2 (3mm pitch) Timing belt http://openbuildspartstore.com/gt3-timing-belt-by-the-foot/ or the GT2 which has a (2mm pitch) http://openbuildspartstore.com/gt2-2mm-timing-belt/ John this is a newly built unit correct? have you ran it long enough to allow for belt stretch and readjust the tension? Tweakie is anyone running the idler wheels now and is it worth a new build to figure them in as they build.
I really don’t know what others are doing but going off at bit of a tangent, I recently encountered a problem with belt stretch using a wire reinforced, Synchro-Power, belt where at an acceleration of 0.6G’s everything was just fine but on increasing the acceleration to 0.8G’s the problems started. The belt manufacturer’s test data (from which they base their belt spec’s) stated almost double the belt teeth in contact with the drive pulley than I was using so overall I was exceeding their designed usage recommendations (belt loading increases exponentially with acceleration). From lessons learnt, I would not want to use anything less than 50% of the driver pulley teeth in contact with the belt but everybody’s mileage may vary. Tweakie.
If it were me, I'd definately invest in the GT3, 3mm, belt, but run that with an additional GT3 belt as a rack. The general consensus is that this helps to keep the loss of steps down greatly. Do a Search for "Double Timer Belts" Gray
Thanks for your replies and help, I have ran the machine light prior to cutting for some time and have done some letter carving no problem, I take it the idler pulleys increase the lap angle one the pulley? they sound an idea Yes it is the GT2 3mm
Hi Gray, With a stepper driven CNC machine we need to go a bit further than just reducing the number of lost steps – they need to be eliminated completely Tweakie.
