Stitching Up Custom Belts - John Jason Fallows

If you’ve got a 3D printer, you’re probably familiar with the reinforced belts that are commonly used on the X and Y axis. These belts either come as long lengths that you attach to the machine on either end, or as a pre-sized loop. Traditional wisdom says you can’t just take a long length of belt and make your own custom loops out of it, but [Marcel Varallo] had his doubts about that.

This is a simple tip, but one that could get you out of a bind one day. Through experimentation, [Marcel] has found that you can use a length of so-called GT2 belt and make your own bespoke loop. The trick is, you need to attach the ends with something very strong that won’t hinder the normal operation of the belt. Anything hard or inflexible is right out the window, since the belt would bind up as soon as it had to go around a pulley.

It seems the key is to cut both ends of the belt very flat, making sure the belt pattern matches perfectly. Once they’ve been trimmed and aligned properly, you stitch them together with nylon thread. You want the stitches to be as tight as possible, and the more you do, the stronger the end result will be.

[Marcel] likes to follow this up with a bit of hot glue, being careful to make sure the hardened glue takes the shape of the belt’s teeth. The back side won’t be as important, but a thin layer is still best. The end result is a belt strong enough for most applications in just a few minutes.

Would we build a 3D printer using hand-stitched GT2 belts? Probably not. But during a global pandemic, when shipments of non-essential components are often being delayed, we could certainly see ourselves running some stitched together belts while we wait for the proper replacement to come in. Gotta keep those face shields printing.

This article was first featured at https://ift.tt/34vuOzz on April 12, 2020 at 10:33PM by Tom Nardi