I was replacing belts that were attached in the 40's and 50's. These
are not only old, but old design. In one lathe the 'bearings' were in
open races. e.g. not in holders but loose. Just better than babbets.

So these are not modern by any means. Both lathes - metal tool grade and
wood lathe (oldest) run smooth. It takes a little time to run in the
belt and it forms to the V's in your wheels. One then takes out a link
to take out the added slack.

Martin


On 12/8/2016 10:29 AM, Jack wrote:
On 12/7/2016 10:35 PM, Martin Eastburn wrote:
I've seen belts that segment inside and start to split into two belts.

Only belts I've seen fall apart were on cars.

ONly it is 3-4" long. I think starting under load or held in that
position a long time. Once each on two lathes (cold starts ?) and one
Drill press.

I imagine light duty belts in an industrial environment might fail more
often than in a home workshop.

In shops that get really hot the lube/tar tends to break
down.

I don't know what my belts are made of. Whatever it is, it definitely
last a long long time. They look like standard, everyday fan belts.

I have link belts on metal, wood lathes and my 85 year old Delta. :-)
The on-off switch on the delta is starting to fail, I might look under
the cover and see what type of switch it is. Bounds to be hard to find,
but I have lots of old versions in sorted cans.

Never needed to put one on my bandsaw (Delta) Open ended pulleys.

I can't imagine a belt causing a metal lathe to vibrate? The metal
lathes I've seen don't vibrate if you load non-concentric turnings in
them. Hard to see how a lowly belt would cause severe vibration in a
1000lb+ tool. Now that I think about it, I've used fly cutters in my
drill press and even then don't recall "severe" vibration at slow speeds.

-- Jack


The older I get the meaner I get. I'm pretty sure soon I'll be biting
people...

http://jbstein.com