Moving Heads - Maintenance Vol.2 -

In my previous blog post, I showed you how I cleaned a moving head, but this time around I’m going to show you how to replace the belt on the moving head.

My previous blog post

This is a customer’s moving head model that we are going to repair today.

AMERICAN DJ FOCUSSPOTTHREEZ

This moving head is equipped with a motorized zoom and focus. It’s a cost effective model that can be recommended for those who don’t have a lot of experience with moving heads.

The moving head is designed to control left, right, up and down movements by moving the pan belt and tilt belt with a motor.
We got this customer’s moving head to repair because it doesn’t move vertically. The customer described to me what kind of issues the moving head had and I guessed that there was probably a problem with the belt. So I disassembled it...

Yes. As expected, the tilt belt was broken.

The particles of rubber from the worn belt sticks to the gear and the bearing.
If they stay dirty, the load on the belt will increase, so I started cleaning these parts immediately.

I removed the stuck rubber with a brush and scraper. The gear and the bearing are now so clean that they look like they’re brand new.

I put the gear and the bearing back into the moving head body, and then I installed a new belt. Next, I sprayed the silicone to finish.
This silicone spray lubricates the gear and the belt with a silicone coating.
Use silicone sprays with different viscosities and volatilities according to the condition of the area. These sprays make the life of the item longer even after being repaired.

A belt part is not only found in moving heads, but it’s also regularly found in a lot of mechanical equipment and it must be regularly inspected or replaced. I think it's easy to understand if you think about things that have motors around you; things such as the fan belt or a car and the drive belt on a motorcycle.

The cause of these belts breaking is that the belt is worn down by the friction heat made by the belt always running, or the rubber becomes cracked and breaks apart due to deterioration after long-term use.

Unlike cars and motorcycles, there is no strict rule to replace the belt every 1-2 years or every 20,000 km, but in order to use your moving head for a long time, I recommend checking the condition of the belt at least once a year.
For AMERICAN DJ and EK PRO moving heads, you can remove the side screw on one side of the arm to check the condition of the belt. Another option is to check to see that black powder isn’t coming from the slit of the arm without disassembling it. If the rubber belt is worn and scraped, then it will turn into black powder and come out of the slit. It’s a sign that the belt must be replaced.

We hope that you’ll find this article helpful and I’ll be happy if it helps you to maintain your equipment to last for a long time.