Posted by David Sherman on Saturday, September 17, 2005 at 3:26AM :
In Reply to: How close to "aligned" does a belt need to be? posted by Will (in MI) on Friday, September 16, 2005 at 9:28PM :
A single "A" belt is usually good for 5 HP or so in industrial applications, providing the RPM is reasonably high. Belt catalogs have tables to help figure this out. Basically a belt/pulley combination is good for a certain amount of torque, which translates into HP in proportion to the RPMs. The torque limit of a belt on a pulley is a direct function of how far the belt wraps around the pulley. A 140 amp alternator is putting out 1.7 kW of electricity, which means it's taking in a little under 3 HP, allowing for inefficiency. If I was building a piece of shop equipment that was running that kind of load continuously all day, such as a blower or a conveyor, I'd probably throw 2 "A" belts on it just to be safe, but your alternator is rarely going to be loaded to anywhere near 140 amps for any length of time. I think it'll be fine like it is.
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