My mill started making an odd noise in the milling head today. It looks like the belt is frayed and missing a tooth or two. Do I need a new belt?
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I would get a new belt. When you remove it, check the spindle bearings. They could be the cause of the noise you’re hearing. Missing teeth on that Gilmer belt are very concerning.
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Do I have to pull the drive motor to remove the belt? Looks like I do but wanted to double check. Thanks as always for your help
I have never had to do it. Someone here has your answer.
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I am fairly certain you need to remove the motor. When you loosen the bolts to move the motor forward and release tension on the belt, there isn’t enough room to slip the belt under the motor gear.
Its a quick job to do - especially since you have the update motor mount.
Yeah the belt is definitely shot. I took it off and it is missing multiple teeth and more are starting to come loose. Trying to locate a new one online but even googling the part number on the belt doesn’t seem to provide an exact match. I have a email into customer support and hope to be able to get a replacement.
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I believe it to be a proprietary belt. It is a weird size
They will send you one quickly.
How does the spindle feel when you turn it by hand? Does it catch or feel like you may have a bearing going south? The missing teeth could be caused by a loose adjustment or the spindle stopping suddenly. It also could be a bearing locking up.
No it spins freely and smoothly with no noise. I also ran the motor with out the belt attached and it sounds normal.
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Well, that’s good. Make sure you get it adjusted correctly. Send an email to @langmuir-jake. He will get you up and running.
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Literally going through the exact same thing right now. My belt just shredded on me. Not sure if chips got in there or what but I’m absolutely shocked it was even still running when I last shut it down as there were zero signs (no noise, no excess vibrations, nothing). I went to fire it up this morning and sounded horrible, checked it and sure enough…shredded. There were a few chips in there, but no smoking gun that I could see aside from that.
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Yeah my issue was somewhat similar. Just out of nowhere after a tool change is started too sound terrible. I would say my belt is missing at least 6 teeth with probably 6 more ready to fall off.
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Absolutely, feel free to shoot us an email and we’ll get you a new belt. They are GT3 timing belts so you should also be able to find them online if you’d like. Here’s the PN: 310-5MGT-15.
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@langmuir-jake thank you. There should be a tech request in your inbox from
Saturday. I have been looking online and I can find plenty of 310-5M-15 belts but struggling to find the 5MGT variant. Is it possible that these are the same/similar belts?
Also is there a recommended procedure for putting proper tension on the new belt?
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I see that ticket now, thank you. Good point I didn’t even realize that before, it looks like our PN just adds the “GT” specification into the middle of the generic 310-5M-15 PN so they are the same belt. We’ll still get another one sent out to you but that’s good to know.
What I usually do when tensioning is get the bottom four mounting screws just slightly loose, then pull back on the motor with one hand while tightening the screws with the other. Then I’ll leave the spindle cover off and run the spindle through a few different RPMs to see how smoothly it runs.
For tricky spindles, I’ve also started the spindle at 100RPM while the bolts are still loose so that way I can see how the belt reacts with too much or too little tension and try to tighten the bolts at the sweet spot.
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