Width can be measured by width of pulley.

Measure the tooth pitch from centre to centre of the raised parts on the pulley, look on the web for details of type of belt and way to determine length required, usually by number of teeth needed to fit over the pulleys in a working position.

Emgee

Edited By Emgee on 13/06/2022 22:18:29

Vic

If you want to reverse engineer the belt you need to track down a belt manufacturers catalogue that gives the formulae to calculate belt length for a given centre to centre distance and type of belt. Last time I did this I used formulae from ContiTech HDT belt catalogue that I'd downloaded. I imagine Gates and others have equally useful catalogues.

Doesn't help that its often not clear from the pulleys which type of belt you have. Usually easy enough if you can eyeball a belt, use the magnifier or photo app on a smartphone to give a better view of a small tooth profile.

Hand held sanders, planers et al have fixed centre distances so the belts are self tensioned by stretching.

A standard near equivalent may not stretch correctly to give the right tension. As the tension is intended to be set by centre distance adjustment the standard belt can be stiffer.

Certainly the semi-transparent ones I got for my planer last year were somewhat more elastic than a standard belt of similar size. As in your case the makers official part price was expensive but diligent searching found two for two-thirds the price on E-Bay. On flogging through all the lists I found that there are only about 3 or 4 sizes of belts used on hand held planers. Presumably because most of them are pretty much different coloured iterations of same design from China Inc.

Clive

try ebay there's loads on there: sander drive belt: Search Result | eBay

Edited By Juddy on 14/06/2022 10:37:52

Seven or so replies to Vic's question and nobody has given him the details of the belt he needs!

I wonder if its because we dont know the model number of the sander?

Since Vic already has a price for the belt then whoever quoted must have more info than we do.

Ian P

It is possible to identify a replacement belt in a situation where the tooth profile, the pitch, the width and the length are unknown but it requires a bit of effort. (jump to last paragraph for the easy way)

There are quite a few different tooth profiles and whilst they may appear similar picking the wrong one will significantly belt life. Manufacturers catalogues might show detailed drawings of the tooth profile but if the pulleys are fitted with flanges and the tooth profile is not visible then its hard to compare and decide.

I imagine that as Vic's belt is on a sander then it will probably not have any means of adjusting the pulley to pulley centre distance, therefore its essential to get the exact length of belt. one can work out the length if one can measure the pulley centres accurately but that is not always as easy as it seems.

Measuring the belt pitch by counting the number of teeth on a sprocket which you know the diameter of is straightforward, so in conjunction with centre to centre distances you can consult catalogues and most likely identify what will fit.

Far, far easier than measuring and guessing is just to Google spares with the product model number, most likely some of the results will include the actual belt manufacturers part number which you can then use to 'shop around' to find the best value supplier.

Ian P