Re: [CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO] Motor drive belt tightness

CalBoy101 wrote:

>I bought a retrofitted Bridgeport clone mill that has size 42 stepper
>motors on it. The controller was blown up and in the process of trying
>to debug it the previous owner had loosened up all the belts on the
>machine.
>
>It has 5/8" wide Gates type cogged belts on X and Y and a 3/8" wide
>Gates belt on the Z axis.
>
>Is there a "rule of thumb" for how tight these belts should be?
>
>

Really tight! If these are fiberglass belts, they can handle a lot of
tension,
and need it to prevent the teeth from being torn out. You can probably find
some tension guides on the Gates Rubber site. I'm running something like
80 Lbs of strand tension on my 1/4" wide XL belts on my X and Y axes,
as recommended by the manufacturer. That seemed WAY high to me, but
these belts have lasted 7+ years without any problems.

Jon