Printing a drive belt

[darthmuppet 0]

I have a self-created design for a replacement drive belt for a printer, but i'm struggling to make Cura do what I want. The belt is is 0.4mm thick and has teeth on it that are 0.9mm wide and 0.6mm tall, all along the inside of the belt. I want a single thickness of filament to be used to form the belt, as I can't see any other way of the belt being thin enough. I can vary the design thickness of the belt, but I can't go below 0.5mm as Cura then slices an incomplete belt.  it is currently printing an inner wall and an outer wall, with the teeth correctly defined and formed on the inner wall. I have a 0.4mm nozzle, and a 0.3mm will not allow the filament to extrude at all. 

 

I've tried compensating wall overlaps, halving wall thickness, upping the line width, setting outer wall width to zero (won't slice), wall printing order and I don't seem to be able to make it do what I need. Anyone ever successfully done this? I'm told PrusaSlicer has a specific setting for it, but I have no appetite for starting over with a new slicer.

 

TIA

[burtoogle 509]

Could you please post a sample stl file that uses the same teeth profile? Thanks.

[darthmuppet 0]

I've PM'd you a link. what i've been seeing on test prints is two layers that don't quite bond together. The material i have is from Technology Outlet in the UK, and is their 'premium flexible filament', with no more information available than that. last night I was able to get such a print to rotate on the pulleys at full speed (linear speed is about 40 inches/sec), so a single layer, if I can manage it, would be ideal, as long as the posts work. I have a feeling I may have to find an alternative solution for them though

[eldrick 64]

If the material is flexible, it will almost certainly be be too stretchy for a precision drive belt.

 

[darthmuppet 0]

You may be right. the belt is under no tension, and i'm not expecting the load to be sufficient to cause it to stretch, but when it costs nothing to print a new one, I'm not too concerned. I have a 1kg roll of this stuff, and no other use for it. There will be a small amount of demand, so I might print them and give them away.