Gates is involved in the entire history of timing belts. It was in 1917 that Gates founder John Gates created the world's first rubber V-belt. Then, 28 years later, in 1945, Gates created the first timing belt that used teeth to synchronise it with the gears.
The development of belts in the automotive industry
The first known timing belt was used in 1945, and the first belt-driven camshaft engine was invented in 1954 by the American Bill Devin. American Bill Devin built a French Panhard Devin air-cooled opposed-cylinder racing car with a highly modified engine using cylinders and cylinder heads from British Norton Manx motorbikes and a rubber Timing belt driving the 2 overhead camshafts on the Norton cylinder heads. The Devin/Panhard/Norton tubular-chassis, fibreglass-bodied car won the 1956 Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) national championship.
The 1966 Pontiac inline 6 was the first mass-produced vehicle to use an overhead cam engine with a timing belt. Fiat's twin-camshaft 124 engine, developed in the early 1960s, was the first mass-produced engine to have two camshafts driven by a Belt. In 1966, Vauxhall Motors began production of the four-cylinder Slant Four with a single overhead camshaft that used a timing belt, a configuration that became one of the most common.
The first range of Synchronous belts featured a V-belt profile and tooth pitch. From this single belt size a wide variety of constructions were born, designed to meet the requirements of light and heavy applications or high and low speeds.
A wide range of Belt applications
The product has since evolved into a complex range of different pitches, profiles and constructions. A wide range of pitches is now available to increase the flexibility of the drive design to include a variety of load/speed conditions.
Different tooth profiles have been developed to increase the power base for a given belt size.
The MXL cross-section succeeded the DP standard. The trapezoidal profiles with imperial pitches (MXL, XL, L H, XH, XXH) still widely used today are the original timing belt profiles.
Subsequently, metric standards (T5, T10 and T20 pitches) appeared without really revolutionising the level of transmissible power.
Metric pitches (AT5, AT10, AT20) with wider teeth were developed for higher load applications.
HTD (circular teeth) and STPD (first curvilinear teeth) profiles were developed by Uniroyal (now Gates Rubber) and Goodyear, respectively, as high-capacity cross-sections. Both had similar curvilinear tooth profiles and pitches, but the two systems were not compatible.
Subsequently, several companies developed their curvilinear and parabolic teeth as the most optimised teeth, particularly for high-speed power transmission. The STS, RPP, MGT, etc. tooth forms then appeared.
The best-performing belt today is the Gates Poly Chain belt. Until now, the driving belt was made of rubber. Gates developed this belt in polyurethane to increase the hardness of the teeth and thus enable much greater power and effort to be transmitted. It was developed in particular for Harley Davidson bikes, initially with HTD teeth and later with MGT parabolic teeth. The first generation gave way to the GT2 with Kevlar Cords, then to the Carbon version, the latest version being the Volt, which is antistatic.