The puzzler got me thinking about flat fan belts. They are used today where ever ultra high speed and low friction are required. (They are the blades in bandsaws, for example.) Ever wonder about the contour of the pulley face, and what keeps the flat belt centered on the pulley? For the curious, t…

The accessory gets turned backwards with a Mobius twist in the belt? I don’t think this is the case. Maybe a misunderstanding about the nature of the Mobius half-twist. The Mobius half-twist is in the belt itself, it’s not giving a regular (non-Mobius) belt a twisted (figure 8) belt-path. Wi…

The mobious twist was all i could come up with,

I proposed a figure 8 solution and can’t understand why it wouldn’t work. I just verified it with 2 pencils and a flat rubber band. The belt would Be contacted on both sides and the pulleys are driven in the same direction. Can someone explain why they couldn’t manufacture the belt without makin…

I should correct the last post. It was NOT a figure 8 that I proposed. Of course that would reverse the rotation of the pulleys. It was simply a half-twist of a straight belt, leaving one side in contact with the, say, top pulley, with the other side in contact with the bottom pulley. Any comment…

@nickpang , the twist might move slightly over time but could never get beyond either of the pulleys so it would be a stable system. The odds are it would remain halfway between both pulleys since that is the position of least torsion and resistance. @Mechaniker ’s link mentions putting the twist on …

The solution to the German fan belt problem is wrong. First, assume that a belt wears thin until it fails. Let"s take for an example a belt which fails at 100 hours when it has worn to 50% of its original thickness. The belt is formed as a moebius loop and a point on one side is marked “A”. Aft…

Sloking: I think the puzzler assumes the cause of belt failure is due with surface wear, that it becomes too “slick” and doesn’t stick properly to the pulley, and not that the belt itself wears out and fails simply because it becomes too thin. You have a good point though.

In my 50 plus years I have had many fan belts break but never a problem related to lack of grip. (plenty of mechanics have tried to sell me an unnecessary belt because of cracks on the inner surface

@thesamemountainbike, that’s not a mobius strip. Those belts are twisted to reverse the direction of rotation. You’ll notice the inside of the belt remains on the inside across both pulleys. @sloking , your premise about the change in thickness might be correct. But belts don’t wear out due to loss …

RE the fan belt puzzler

The Show

the_same_mountainbike February 14, 2012, 4:51am 20

Gentlemen, Ladies, see the attached.

This was the norm intextile mills for a generation or more…much more. They were flat leather belts.

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RE the fan belt puzzler

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