A Step Forward or 2 Steps Back?

Now that I have a metal cutting CNC, I thought it would be fun to test an idea I've had for a few years - replace the belt drive with a gear drive on my homemade band saw. While all of the work could have been done without a CNC (I've done similar before, many times), the CNC supplies the extreme accuracy that's required for a setup like this. The gears must be cut precisely and mesh together precisely for this to even have a chance at success. My original plan was to 3D print the gears and I actually did that and tested how well they worked in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Aa9Wojpbdo But I had concerns for long-term durability, even though it looked like the gears would do the job. Certainly they would have been less noisy than the metal ones. Why do this in the first place? Am I bored and don't have enough to do? Belt drives are the default because they are cheap and easy to do. You don't need to have perfect alignment for a belt and pulleys combo to work acceptably. The downsides are slippage and the amount of tension needed to avoid slippage. That tension puts a lot of side-load on the motor bearings and the drive shaft bearings that can lead to early failure. Like I said in the video, the side-load problem wasn't enough of a concern for me, but the slippage one was. The only way for gears to slip is for them to strip the teeth off, and the teeth on these are more than strong enough. I used a few 3D printed parts in the build, including ones that I just used to accurately line up parts. As for the temporary installation of the motor, I need to use the saw some more before I decide whether I'm keeping it gear driven. If I decide to stick with the gears, I'll do a much better job of mounting the motor. ▶️ Project plans for sale: https://ibuildit.ca/plans/ ▶️ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=865843&ty=h ▶️ Join my Makers Mob for detailed build tutorials: https://go.themakersmob.com/john-heisz-i-build-it/?via=ibuildit My "Scrap bin" channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/IBuildItScrapBin #ibuildit #woodworking Website: https://ibuildit.ca/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/I-Build-It-258048014240900/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/i_build_it.ca/