Thread: bandsaw drive belt

Originally Posted by BobL

Normally one can just put some side pressure on those multi V belts and force them to ride in their respective tracks

Those multiV's will also take a fair bit of side tension before they jump out of their V's.

But being significantly out of alignment is maybe why the old one broke of ideally it should be aligned.

I suspect the Band wheel is left alone and its the motor that is moved in and out to suit - that's how mine is rigged up.

Hi BobL, That's what I suspected that its been out of alignment for a while, the motor is in a fixed position,and the4 bolts at the back adjust the tracking, I plan on using it quite a bit so want to align everything to prevent any more failures,and more cost, there must be a procedure to align everything but cant find anthings yet, cheers

Newbie, when I got my bandsaw secondhand the previous owner said that the blade wouldn't run in the middle of the bottom wheel. I used the bolts at the back to to adjust the wheel to make the blade track correctly. I found that I needed to adjust the motor pulley on the motor shaft to make it align with the pulley on the wheel. If you can fit a steel rule or some other sort of straight edge in behind the wheel and adjust your motor or motor pulley so that the sides of both pulleys are in line and parallel. See below for explanation. I did notice that the end of the motor shaft appears to be a long way inside the pulley. I don't know if it is because you have the 2 speed pulley and a short motor shaft, or if the pulley has not been positioned correctly on the shaft. The other thing I notice from your photo is that the tensioner is on the inside of the belt so that the points of the vee are running on the roller. The correct way of fitting the tensioner is to have it running on the back of the belt.

Pulleys.JPG

Originally Posted by Treecycle

Newbie, when I got my bandsaw secondhand the previous owner said that the blade wouldn't run in the middle of the bottom wheel. I used the bolts at the back to to adjust the wheel to make the blade track correctly. I found that I needed to adjust the motor pulley on the motor shaft to make it align with the pulley on the wheel. If you can fit a steel rule or some other sort of straight edge in behind the wheel and adjust your motor or motor pulley so that the sides of both pulleys are in line and parallel. See below for explanation. I did notice that the end of the motor shaft appears to be a long way inside the pulley. I don't know if it is because you have the 2 speed pulley and a short motor shaft, or if the pulley has not been positioned correctly on the shaft. The other thing I notice from your photo is that the tensioner is on the inside of the belt so that the points of the vee are running on the roller. The correct way of fitting the tensioner is to have it running on the back of the belt.

Pulleys.JPG

HiTreecycle thanks for all the advice and diagram, I did wonder about the motor pulley, also the blade is running right on the edge of the wheel. iwonder if it has been out of aligment since new.I,l have a go at trying what you,ve said and see how that goes. cheers.