Has anyone tried UHMwPE as belt replacement?

UHMwPE has a lot of right properties such as high abrasion resistance, high fatigue, water and UV resistant, low stretch to be a belt replacement. Therefore I've been wondering if anyone tried it?

As a belt to hold my pants, I wish I had one.

Any supplier for timing belt using it ?

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/24/2020 01:06PM by MKSA.

---

"A comical prototype doesn't mean a dumb idea is possible" (Thunderf00t)

UHMwPE is a rigid termoplastic...
From my knowledge in the machinebuilding industry i never saw that.
not sure that you get timingbelts made of that. The UHMwPE is usually used for sliders or guides in timing belt systems....

Yes. Search by the "spectra", "dyneema", and "spider wire" trade names and you'll see that it was relatively common, especially for corexy, before inexpensive belts became available with much better quality.

Belts are easier. There's a reason you don't see a lot of it these days. ☺

I tried using some dyneema fishing line in my corexy sand table in its original configuration. I ran into multiple problems- you have to wrap the line around the drive pulley multiple times in order to get enough friction to drive it. That means you need a rather complex and noisy arrangement of pulleys so that the angle of the cable doesn't change with the position of the carriage. I also found it difficult to tie reliable knots in the stuff- they had a tendency to slip under tension, and finally, like all cable driven mechanisms, stringing and restringing the thing was slow, tedious, and far more difficult than using belts. I quickly changed to belt drive when the cable sliced the printed drive pulley into donuts after a few hours of operation.



[vimeo.com]

It might be OK if you cut the drive pulley from aluminum on a lathe, but there's still the problem of the noisy pulleys. If noise isn't a problem, and you're good at tying knots, and you have a lathe to make the drive pulley, dyneema fishing line might be OK...

Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 08/29/2020 10:08PM by the_digital_dentist.

---

Ultra MegaMax Dominator 3D printer: [drmrehorst.blogspot.com]