TOOTHED DRIVE BELTS

These belts are easy to identify with a series of raised teeth laying across the belt on the inside. The outside of the belt will be normally smooth but double sided toothed belts do exist with teeth on the inside and the outside. A common name for this type of belt is a timing belt. The tricky bit is trying to identify which type you need. They can be metric or imperial. They come in many many tooth pitches( the distance between the centre of one tooth to the centre of the next tooth) some of which to the eye can look almost the same. They also come with a whole range of different tooth shapes such as round or trapezoidal.

Measuring a toothed belt is made up of 3 measurements. The length, the width and the style of tooth. They are one of the most difficult to identify if your not used to dealing with them please call or email as posting us a sample may be the only way.

Length

If the belt has snapped then measure it end to end. If your belt is still intact and is no longer useable then cut it in half to measure it. If it is still in use then with a soft tape measure around the outside. You could run something else around the outside but try and use something that doesn’t stretch. You can then measure that item to get your length. Now that you have the length you will need to work out which tooth formation you require.
First of all don’t be surprised if you have an imperial drive belt no matter where your machine was manufactured.

Tooth Pitch

If your belt is relatively short then the easiest thing to do is count the number of teeth that you have. You can then take the length and divide it by the number of teeth that you have. This will give you the pitch. There are far too many pitch possibilities to explain here but as long as you can tell us the number of teeth and the length that is normally enough.

Tooth Style And Height

Take a look at the teeth on the belt from the edge of the belt and see if they are rounded or square. Knowing this will really help us. The last thing is to measure the depth of the belt as accurately as possible. With this information you can either email us or give us a call.