So between yesterday and today, someone went to town on the belt sander… Can we find out who needs retraining on this?
I’m going to flip the belt over but essentially half of this belt is toast… And no, the eraser thing isn’t effective.
I think there’s new belts in the cabinet bellow the sander. Also for what it’s worth it’s called a horizontal/vertical edge sander. 
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It wasn’t me (obviously since I don’t do wood work at all) but an explanation of what happened, and how to spot someone doing it, would be appreciated. Too much pressure? Too long on the belt before letting it rest? Not cleaning it off between passes? Bad wood?
I’d like to learn from this person’s mistake, so that if/when I’d ever want to make something out of wood, i’ll know 
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All of the above 
The big one, like all of the other tools, is let the tool do the work… don’t ever force anything. If you’re having to push or pull very hard or do anything more than just light pressure, you’re probably doing something wrong.
For belt sanders (and all sanders in genral) sanding isn’t meant to be fast work. It’s the finishing touch that’s done in slow stages to get a perfect fit / finish. Start coarse, work your way fine letting the paper do the work. When you press too hard, A) the glue starts heating up and quickly loses it’s bond with the grinding media in the paper and B) you don’t allow the sanded particulate to escape from between the part and paper. Eventually you start building up gunk on the sandpaper which leaves streaks in your surface.
If you catch these nurtles (technical term 
- maybe there’s a better word?) early, you can knock them off pretty easy with the big rubber eraser thing.
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