I've got some GT2 steel reinforced belts - white ones if you search Aliexpress.

3D Printing
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I’ve got some GT2 steel reinforced belts - white ones if you search Aliexpress.

There are nice steel threads inside the belt. It’s obvious it has enormous strength.

But it is not easy to bend the belt around a small radius pulley. I’ve got a 16 tooth pulleys.

Does anyone have experience using steel reinforced betls with 16 tooth pulleys?
Will that setup work well?

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My understanding is it won’t work. If you have to work that hard to get it to flex, it’s going to go bad from fatigue very quickly, and then there’s the energy the motor expends trying to fight that flex resistance.

Regular belt is fine, they usually use Kevlar-like fibers to resist stretching.

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I agreed @Jeff_DeMaagd … I have one and I never use it because is hard to bend, the strength is impressive but IMHO this is suitable for a big pulley or heavy duty machine like CNC (OX for example) but OX still use regular GT2 belt 6mm though and I think @Anatoly_Makarevich you can use the regular belt like Jeff wrote, is strong enough for ordinary 3D printer from my experience

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@Nathan_Walkner
Is it your real experience?

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@Nathan_Walkner
I’m considering a delta build approx 1m high. So it is 2m of belts per tower.
This may be a premature optimization but I wanted to completely eliminate belt stretching.
Moreover I plan to use tensioned belt to constrain the carriage so it don’t rotate.

I played a bit with the belt and 20tooth pulley. It actually may work.

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Standard fiberglass core belts are about 60-70% as strong and stiff as steel core, according to Gates. That’s not very much performance difference. Except steel core will fail much faster in 3d printing because of the small pulleys and high cycle counts.

You’re much better off using 9mm wide 2mm GT2 or 2mm GT3 (regular neoprene/fiberglass) if you’re worried about stiffness. Both of those will achieve similar strength/stiffness as a 6mm steel-core 2mm GT2. (GT3 is the same tooth shape as GT2 but stronger construction.)

Seriously though, belt stretch is rarely ever an issue with fiberglass belts. People really overestimate how much it matters. In a big delta, frame flex, low motor torque, and carriage twisting are much more important than belt stretch. If you have to use bigger pulleys to keep the steel core belt from fatiguing, that’s going to cause more position error due to the motor working harder than you save in belt stretch.