Belt wear/life expectancy?

Out of curiosity, how often should I REASONABLY expect to have to change my drive belts? I have a "sturdy" with T5 belts. I finished building it in late October/early November last year and have been using it a LOT. Plenty of failed prints, until I upgraded my Z motors to ones with more torque (they were slightly underpowered and were getting out of sync) and got a better hotend (went from Chinese, to a J-head Mk. V-BV, to - most recently - an E3D-V6, which I LOVE!).

A month or so ago I noticed my X belt was starting to pop wires - it was starting to look like it was having a bad hair day, but only on the end that goes over the idler (the pulley end, oddly enough, looked fine; I would have expected more wear there, since I had recently upgraded to aluminum pulleys. which GREATLY improved my print quality). Now it looks like my Y belt is going the same way, and I plan to swap out my PLA bearing holders, bar clamps, and other PLA parts for ABS ones as long as I have it apart that far. But I am wondering - was that a reasonable life-span for my belts? Aside for a couple weeks' downtime before Christmas due to a controller and hot-end meltdown, it has been running for quite a while - often, prints as long as 9 to 10 hours, sometimes more and sometimes less.

Hi,

The simple answer would be that belt lifetime depends on quality and usage conditions.

Is your belt running within the bearing widths for the entire motion of the axes? If it rubs against the idler washers then it will be subject to wear.

I know nophead changed his belt specification from the original ones due to the experience of a user. As I remember, this was more of a speculative change than a technically required one.

Aside from making sure that the belts run clear of the idler washers, the only other thing I proactively do to is vary the parking position when the machine is left unused for a while so that kinks do not appear in the belts around the pulley and idler positions.

I see no deterioration in my belts after 18 months of moderate use.

Regards,
Neil Darlow

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/25/2015 03:54AM by neildarlow.

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Printing with Mendel90 from fedora 25 using Cura, FreeCAD, MeshLab, OpenSCAD, Skeinforge and Slic3r tools.

Well, it is certainly running true and not rubbing. One thing I plan to do is replace the idler assembly with one that is easier to adjust for tension, though... my replacement belts are also a tad wider than the original, as well, and I made sure I bought plenty of replacement stock, so we'll see.

My x-carriage belt rubs on the left hand idler washer, due to the bar clamp cracking early on and now I can't (easily) put it back under tension - yes I know I should get round to printing myself the new x-ends but there are just so many other things I want to do!

Despite the black 'friction burns' (it's more likely just a combination of grease and dust) on the front edge I haven't noticed any deterioration in performance or print quality and I have used my printer extensively (far more than I ever anticipated) for over two years.