Cam synthesis (Q1904030)

While the synthesis of planar cam mechanisms has come of age, that of spatial mechanisms is still in its infancy. A milestone in the development of methods of synthesis of planar cam mechanisms was the introduction of envelops, a similar breakthrough as applied to spatial mechanisms, being yet to be reported. To be sure, attempts in this direction are recorded in the literature, as pointed out in Chapter 1. This state of affairs motivated the work summarized in this book. The objectives of the book are manifold. We include first a unified approach to cam synthesis, whereby planar, spherical and spatial cam mechanisms are synthesized within a single theoretical framework. We thus start by studying the synthesis of the contact surfaces of spatial cam mechanisms composed of three links, namely, a frame, a cam and a follower. By properly setting the mechanism parameters to values that render the cam and follower axes concurrent, we obtain spherical mechanisms. Likewise, by setting the mechanism parameters so as to render these axes parallel, we end up with planar mechanisms. As a matter of fact, planar mechanisms are derived as a special case of their spherical counterparts. In synthesizing all these mechanisms, we aim at producing contact surfaces of minimum sliding, thereby minimizing the power losses due to dry friction.