Chris, I’m so sorry this happened to you… We had no idea that this was a possible failure mode of our belts and I’m glad you are ok!
While we are trying to push the industry forward with new advancements, sometimes despite our best efforts to test things thoroughly and scale up cautiously, it’s not until products are used on a wide variety of setups that issues present themselves.
The belts that failed on you were in fact produced 10A softer than normal which I discovered after some complaints of poor performance and teeth shredding off. To existing customers who bought these belts we offered free replacements for the new HT version where we used a different pigment to guarantee a high hardness on every batch and were still in the process of confirming performance of those and scaling up slowly. In the meantime instead of throwing a heap of brand new belts in the bin we offered the soft belts as B grade with reduced performance and a clearance price as Mach One owners were still getting good life out of them and we had no idea there was such a dangerous failure mode.
Given that there are a wide variation of belt drive setups out there and that we aren’t sure we could re-create the conditions for this failure mode in order to ensure the new HT version can’t have this problem, we have decided to discontinue the Radium Thane belts for the DIY market and all existing customers have been emailed with a safety warning to stop using them and that a refund is available for those who reply with their order number.
For Mach One customers extensive testing has been done with our drivetrain and Mach One owners will still be able to buy the HT Thane belts for their boards.
We are also going to pay for a replacement motor on your Dadbod @Yeahthatperson as it was our belt that broke it and its the least we could do considering what happened to you.
I appreciate the concern and feedback. Safety is our #1 priority and to push the industry forward we need to increase the safety of eboards as much as we can. Hence our decision to discontinue the Thane belts.