Abstract
When a mechanism transfers a motion to an intersected shaft, a cylindrical cam mechanism may be the best choice among the mechanisms. The cylindrical cam with a roller follower provides to transfer the motions to the intersect shafts simply without other connecting equipments of the intersect shafts. Typical example may be a roller-gear-cam mechanism. But the shape of the cam must be exactly defined in order to satisfy the conditions for the prescribed motion of the follower. This paper proposes a new method for the shape design of the cylindrical cams and also a CAD program is developed by using the proposed method. The relative velocity method calculates the relative velocity of the follower versus the cam at a center of roller, and then determines a contact point by using the geometric relationships and the kinematic constraints. The constraint used in the relative velocity method is that the relative velocity must be parallel to a common tangent line at the contact point of two independent bodies, i. e. the cam and the follower. Then, the shape of the cam is defined by the coordinate transformation of the trace of the contact points. Finally, this paper presents an example in order to prove the accuracy of the proposed methods in this paper and the application of the CAD program"CamDesign".
