Just a quick question or two. First what is the life expectancy of the drive belts? My machine is 6 months old and I had to replace the belt across the top. There were to areas in the belt that looked stretched or warped like. Then after i replaced that i was doing a carve and saw metal shavings after about 5-6 hours of work. So i stopped and checked the router, nothing, carriage, nothing. My machine is low enough that i can see the top of the rail and it looks like the metal wheels on the carriage cut into the rail. Has this happened to anyone else, should i be concerned? Some pics…
a pic i guess…
Can you tell if the old belts had glassfibre or steel reinforcement inside them?
I had that, others have also seen this issue, for me it was the washers on the M5 bolts holding the guide bearings for the X belt, I loosed off the M5 bolts and then re-tightened whilst holding the washers up with yet another hand.
Problem went away when I bought a shindy HDZ 
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The belts should last for a year or more — let us know at support@carbide3d.com
The problem with the flanged idler bearings happens sometimes — loosen the bolt for the idler bearings and push the bearing assembly up a bit, and loosen the upper and lower V wheels, pull the gantry up, and push down on the top set of V wheels and retighten them, then re-adjust the V wheels — if that doesn’t work, let us know at support@carbide3d.com and we’ll work it out with you.
Yes, that’s what a failed belt looks like. You’ll find it won’t hold tension properly any more. In my experience, one of the big factors in this is crashing the machine into the end stops (which is really hard on belts!) - but there are certainly other factors too (overtight, material crashes usually break a tool first…but can cause this sort of damage as well.). Given that this looks like it’s at the end of travel (you’re grove stops here) I suspect it’s a few crashes into the stops.
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Thank you so much for the ideas, i will try them today! the belts were the steel reinforced ones by the way.
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