Flat Belt Drive
From DT Online
Description
Flat Belts made of leather were the traditional means of transmitting power throughout factories using Line Shaft type arrangements. They could be twisted to reverse the direction of rotation and easily moved from a ‘live pulley’ across to a ‘loose pulley’ to remove power to an individual machine from a continuously rotating Line Shaft.
Features and Applications
Note: The pulleys used in Flat Belt drives are not in fact ‘flat’ but rather they are slightly convex or barrel shaped. This ensures that the flat belt stays central because it always rides to the top of the curve - try it in a model by using round wooden beads as pulleys and connecting them with a wide elastic band.
Animations
- Examples from Nguyen Duc Thang's YouTube Channel 2100 Animated Mechanical Mechanisms
| Belt Clutch - this was once very popular in factories using Line Shaft type arrangements because of its simplicity. Kinetic friction is smaller than static friction so the force for shifting the belt from the fixed pulley to the free-wheeling pulley is relatively small because the shifting is performed when the pulleys rotate. Most of these clutches were hand operated. | Belt Drive - transmission between two parallel shafts. By twisting the belt, reversing is possible for rope, round and flat belts, but not for V-belt. |
 
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| Round Plastic Pulley & Belt Kit
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Plastic Belt Pulley
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V Belt Drives
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V Belt Pulleys
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V-Belt Cone Pulley
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Sewing Machine Belt
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Flat Drive Belts
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Toothed Drive Belts
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Ribbed Drive Belts
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