I’m in a production run for a product and my SO3 has been running 8-10 hours per day. I’m cutting walnut, maple, and cherry with adaptive tool paths for pocketing at .07" DOC, .100" Optimal Load, and 100 IPM. The tooling is all Amana and sounds good to my (admittedly new) ear when cutting. Cuts look good and everything is within the tolerances I planned (it’s not a precision product persay, so as along as everything fits together and looks good, I’m happy).
Over the course of 60 units with 2 parts each (for a total of 120 cut-out pieces) I’ve had to replace two belts. These belts had many hours on them before this run, and the run has accumulated about 60 hours evenly split between the walnut, maple, and cherry along with another 50 hours or so cutting parts out of acrylic and some thin aluminum. I need to hit a completion date, so I’m pushing the machine and I know it. I’m not upset about replacing the belts…their cost is included in my project cost calculations…but I’m still new to the SO3 and am wondering if I’m seeing expected service life for the belts.
When I first assembled the machine I broke a few belts fairly quickly and I think that was due to running them at too high of tension and not really knowing what I was doing.
I think I’ve reached a happy medium on tension, but I’d like to hear thoughts on expected belt life given how hard I’m running my machine.
I bought a used xxl in Feb 2019. I am still using original x and y belts and have 100s of hours on them. My belt Z was replaced in March 2020 with hdz but original z belt never wore out.
As always mileage varies. The new belts in maintenance kit are fiberglass I think and steel core belts are available.
Interesting. I must be running mine at too high a tension or I’m being a bit too aggressive with feeds and speeds, then, right? I have to get this run completed on time, so for now I may just accept the wear and tear…but long-term I’d like to get “100s of hours” out of my belts…that would be sweet!
FWIW, I’ve checked all the usual suspects with regard to belt wear…pulley alignment/tightness…belt tension (though I may still be too high…I’m hitting 86hz on the Gates app right now for the Y axis and 88 hz on the X both are measured with 21 inches between a couple of sharpie pens shoved under the belts).
I’ve had an XXL for 3-4 years, and would have put well over 200hrs on my original belts. I also replaced z axis with an hdz, at maybe 100hrs.
I’ve crashed it, cut aluminium, ply, hardwoods, cut without dust extraction, they have made it through it all.
I did put steel cored belts on a while ago, for no other reason than just because, but I’ll go back to the originals if there are any issues with steel
Maybe nothing and you just got a poor batch of steel core belts?
Or there might be a place where the belt rubs against something metal (idlers alignement ?) and this lead to premature wearout ? did you inspect the broken belts and what did they look like ?
I did inspect them. The last two showed failure of the outer strand of steel. One failure was on the X and one was on the Y. The Y failure was both outer strands of steel. The X only one of the outer strands failed. I have been working to assure perfect alignment of the idlers and pulleys, but I will revisit it…as something is definitely amiss it seems.
The one failure I had with my steel-core belts was one outer strand getting separated from the belt (it did not snap though). There is somewhat of a consensus here that while steel-core belts stretch less, they are not ideal for use in such tight radii as we have in the Shapeoko pulley and idlers. For pure reliability on production machines, I would use fiberglass belts (which is the type now shipped again with Shapeokos, I think)
This is really great information! I didn’t know about the consensus about steel vs. fiberglass. My machine came with steel so I thought that was superior. I will contact support! Thanks Carbide3D!
We are transitioning back to fiberglass belts — I believe Maintenance Kits now have fiberglass, but some resellers may have old stock — if you get steel core, let us know and we’ll send you a replacement set.
I bought Gates-branded belts from SDP/SI back when I upgraded to 9mm belts on my SO3 shortly before upgrading to XL (I’d planned ahead and had ordered enough for that upgrade as well) — still using them.
The genuine Gates-branded belts have held up for years, and the pulleys and the belts themselves seem “grippier” than the others I’ve had occasion to use.
@WillAdams
Do you think that the wider belts have any adverse effects on the stepper pulley shaft?
The reason I ask is because my stepper pulleys have the belts already beyond the shaft end by about 0.2 inch.
Anything wider would be even further beyond the shaft end.
That was a concern I had when I initially did my (unofficial) upgrade to 9mm belts using pulleys and Gates-branded belts sourced from SDP/SI — even asked on a couple of engineering forums — the projection is less than 5mm which is less than the diameter of the pulley which if memory serves was suggested as an upper limit, so while the 10mm pulleys and 9mm belts work, this is why an upgrade to wider pulleys isn’t an option on a stock machine with the current motor mounting (see the photos of the nascent Pro for an example of one approach to this).
