Chain, Belt & Sprocket Drives
Every chain, belt & sprocket drives calculator on CalcEngines — each with its formula, a worked example, the standard it follows and the assumptions it makes.
6 calculators in this section
- Belt Tension and Shaft Load CalculatorHow tight, measured the way you can actually measure it — deflect the span by a sixty-fourth of its length and read the force — and then the part every other belt-tension page leaves out: the resultant shaft load, in magnitude and direction, and what it does to the bearing's rating life. The capstan relation with the groove angle done properly, the centrifugal term on both sides where it belongs, and ISO 281's exponent to turn an over-tension into a number.
- Chain Length and Center Distance CalculatorChain length from a centre distance and centre distance from a chain length, with the even link count applied — so the answer is the centre distance the chain you can actually buy will give you, and the take-up you need to find. ANSI B29.1 sprocket diameters rather than the PD + 0.6p shortcut, the wrap and C/p checks with the maker who publishes each one named, and the exact polygonal chain length printed beside the catalogue series so you can see how far the approximation has drifted.
- Chain Wear and Elongation CalculatorMeasure a length across a known number of pitches and this returns the elongation, the remaining life, the GO/NO-GO length to scribe on a rule, and a verdict against the tighter of the limit you chose and the sprocket-dependent 200/N rule. All four published limits are printed with the words their publishers used, the two contradictory statements of 200/N's range are settled by arithmetic, and the page works out whether your rule can resolve the answer at all.
- Drive Service Factor CalculatorThe service factor and the design power, from three published families at once — the chain table Renold Jeffrey and Tsubaki agree on, the RMA-style V-belt table with its idler additions, and Khurmi's multiplicative textbook method. They disagree by up to 0.36 on ordinary duties and they disagree about SHAPE too: the chain tables have no daily hours axis at all. All three are printed, none is averaged, and the page says plainly that the manufacturer's own figure beats every one of them.
- Roller Chain Selection CalculatorWhich chain size, from the power and the speed — by the route that can be verified: design load against minimum breaking load over a speed-dependent design factor, with the multiple strand factors, the tooth-count and ratio limits, and every figure attributed to the maker who publishes it. No rating curve, because no rating table could be read reliably; and the breaking load is an input, because five catalogues disagree about it by up to 34% for the same ISO designation.
- Sprocket Geometry CalculatorEvery diameter a sprocket drawing needs, from the tooth count, the pitch and the roller — pitch, outside, root, maximum hub, and the two caliper diameters, because the even-tooth and odd-tooth figures are different numbers and measuring an odd sprocket with the even one is a classic rejection. ASME B29.1 forms throughout, with the chordal speed variation that explains the 17-tooth minimum, and an explicit list of what the standard contains that this page will not guess at.