Printing your own timing belts

As an interesting exercise, I tried printing my own timing belts. These certainly wouldn't work for driving a printer, but they could come in handy for making toys or prototypes.

I was having trouble slicing a complete model of the belt, so instead, I just modeled the teeth all standing on end. I then set Slic3r to use a single perimeter the same height as the width of the belt, and with an offset of -0.3mm so that the perimeter overlapped all of the teeth.

The first photo shows a timing belt printed in PET+. The second photo shows one in nylon (Taulman Bridge) on a test jig I made. I also tried ones in ABS and PLA for grins. I tested each while running my jig at about 1000 RPM. As I expected, the PLA and ABS failed very quickly. Oddly, I expected the PET+ to do pretty well but it didn't last much longer. (I've just started playing with PET+, so I may not be using the right settings.) The Taulman Bridge nylon, however, ran for about an hour before I had to go to dinner and turned it off.

Ooooo, I'm definitely trying something like this when I get myself some Taulman.

---

Realizer- One who realizes dreams by making them a reality either by possibility or by completion. Also creating or renewing hopes of dreams.
"keep in mind, even the best printer can not print with the best filament if the user is the problem." -Ohmarinus

What printer is that?

The printer is an earlier prototype of New Matter's MOD-t printer (see this crowdsource forum post). I did some design work for them and it has ended up being my current printer.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/04/2014 07:56PM by LoboCNC.

To improve the tensile properties coextrude glass, or carbon fibers with Nylon, or maybe igus bearing material, (if it's flexible) with Bas de Bruijn strand embedding tool:

Additive wire laying
[forums.reprap.org]

Additive Wire Laying with Machinekit
[www.youtube.com]

basdebruijn blog
[basdebruijn.com]

igus Bearing Material Filament for 3D Printers
[www.igus.com]

igusTribo plastic - Polymer bearings material
[www.youtube.com]

Can you show de X-Y movement?

Quote
OttoBunge
Can you show de X-Y movement?

There are a couple of video links in this crowdsourcing post.

Quote
A2
To improve the tensile properties coextrude glass, or carbon fibers with Nylon, or maybe igus bearing material, (if it's flexible) with Bas de Bruijn strand embedding tool:

Fiber reinforcing would actually make printed belts quite useful. I wonder if it's possible to embed a coil of glass or kevlar fiber right in the filament - kind of like a wire-wound guitar string but with the coiled fiber embedded in the filament. It would then stretch out to its full length as it's extruded. Might need kind of a large nozzle diameter to get the flow started properly without clogging, and I guess you'd also some sort of cutoff mechanism.

Thanks!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqscOkfifoE&feature=youtu.be