To ensure that the welded joint on the belt is carried out reliably, we recommend the following temperatures: For PU (polyurethane) 285°C (approx. 275…295°C) or 545°F (approx. 527…563°F) and for TPE (polyester) 235°C (approx. 225…250°C) or 455°F (approx. 437…482°F).
In general, it is recommended that the belt to be welded is at least at room temperature.
Too high temperatures “burn” the welding material, too “low” do not produce the sufficient fusibility.

If the welding is done correctly (e.g. temperature, contact pressure, holding time, cooling time), the splice is almost as strong as the rest of the belt. Often, the belt tends to break at a different point if the load is too high.

No, this makes no difference with non-reinforced belt profiles. In addition, the execution of an angled weld on profiles would be very difficult.

The battery-powered friction welding machine is particularly suitable for this. This cordless machine requires no heating time and the guide clamp is already integrated. This makes handling in confined spaces much easier and the welding is done within seconds.
Alternatively, manual welding can also be carried out with guide clamp and a hot paddle welder.

Yes, and they are mechanical connections. In general, however, these are intended more as a quick bridging option in the event of a belt break. BEHAbelt offers so-called twisted round belts or hook belts. These are twisted and connected with a metal hook.
The other alternative is the hollow round belt. Here the inside of the round belt is hollow. A nipple is placed inside, which holds both belt ends together.

Generally, butt welding is sufficient for belt profiles without reinforcement. It is irrelevant whether the belt profile is a round belt or a V-belt, for example.
Butt welding can also be carried out on belt profiles with reinforcement, but it must be noted that the reinforcement itself cannot be welded (aramid, polyester or steel). Only the patented glass fibre PU reinforcement from BEHAbelt can be welded.

In principle, the welding process can be roughly divided into four steps:

1. Prepare the belt profile (for non-reinforced belt profiles the plane 90° cut is sufficient; for reinforced profiles the reinforcement should be drilled out after the plane 90° cut).
2. Clamp the belt profile into the BEHAbelt RS02 friction welding machine.
3. The friction welding machine does not need any heating time, as the heat and the melting process are generated by friction. After starting the machine, the two belt ends move together with the automatically correct contact pressure and are welded by friction in seconds.
4. After the welding process and the cooling time, the weld seam is cut off all around with a side cutter. In addition, the remains of the bead could also be ground off.

You can find instructions for butt welding with the BEHAbelt RS02 friction welding machine here as a video.

Since the reinforcements (aramid, polyester, steel) themselves cannot be welded, the belt should be drilled out to improve the connection. This prevents the two reinforcements from lying against each other without a connection and instead fills this area with PU, which itself can be completely welded.
You can find detailed instructions for this step here.

The fundamental difference between these two processes is the type of welding:
In paddle welding, a Teflon plate is heated up to the desired temperature. Once this temperature is reached, welding of PU or TPE can begin.
With the friction welding machine, the heat or melting of the belt ends made of PU (TPE not possible) is achieved by means of friction. This saves the heating time and due to the automatics (0-position, contact pressure, frequency of friction) the repeatability is also given.
The welding paddle always comes with a separate guide clamp, which makes the field of the different profiles to be welded very variable. In principle, any profile can be welded thanks to individually exchangeable inserts for the guide clamp. Flat belt strips up to a width of 80mm are also possible.
On the RS02 friction welding machine, the clamping jaws can also be exchanged; however, due to the design of the machine, the bandwidth is somewhat more limited than with the separate guide jaws for welding paddle (geometries for RS02: round belts 6-20, V-belts: 6×4 – 22×14, in addition, various special profiles such as ridge top V-belts, twin V-belts, T-profiles and also, for example, square or U-profiles).
As the welded profile requires a cooling time for further processing, it must remain in the friction welding machine, contrary to the use of a welding paddle, as the guide unit is integrated there. Thus, for series welding in larger quantities, the welding paddle is the better choice. There, the welded belt remains in the guide clamp and additional belts can be joined quickly with additional guide clamps.
Finally, the purchase price is another factor in the decision-making process. The RS02 friction welding machine or RS02 AKKU cost considerably more than the combination of welding paddle and guide clamp.

In principle, the welding process can be roughly divided into four steps:

1. Prepare the belt profile (for non-reinforced belt profiles the plane 90° cut is sufficient; for reinforced profiles the reinforcement should be drilled out after the plane 90° cut).
2. Clamp the belt profile in the guide unit (e.g. guide clamp FZ01 Vario). This aligns the ends to be welded correctly.
3. The actual welding process: The hot paddle welder is lifted between the two belt ends. Then the guide unit is pressed together so that the belt ends are heated and melted on the welding plate. After the welding seam is visible, the clamp is opened, the plate is removed and the clamp is pressed together again and locked in place.
4. After the welding process and the cooling time, the welding seam is cut off all around using a side cutter. In addition, the remains of the bead could also be ground off.

You can find instructions for butt welding with BEHAbelt EErgo paddle welder here as a video.

For belt profiles with reinforcement, the overlap welding offers an increase in tensile force. Belt profiles with reinforcement are used in applications that require a higher tensile force. The reinforcement (e.g. aramid, polyester, steel) itself cannot be welded.

In general, the following two parameters should be taken into consideration when making a decision:

The belt length and the weight to be conveyed.

The following two recommendations apply to the belt length:
Belt length < belt diameter x 1000 => none
Belt length > belt diameter x 1000 => recommended

Example: Round belt 12mm x 1000 = 12000mm = 12m
(Note: For V-belts, the height is given as the diameter).

The conveying weight can be matched with the respective Fmax value (butt / overlap) of the belt profile.
Example:
PU V-belt with the following Fmax values (butt 15.4kg, overlap 30.0kg).
Conveyor weight is 21.0kg.
Thus, the overlap welding would be mandatory because the weight load would be too high for the pure butt welding.