Design and machining of cylindrical cam with meshing indexing disc

Abstract: Cams are fundamentally important machine elements, which provide a simplemeans of generating virtually any follower motion. This paper presents a simple yet comprehensive method for the design and machining of a cylindrical cam with a meshing indexing disc. In the proposed methodology, homogenous coordinate transformation and conjugate surface the-ory are employed to develop a kinematic model for the cam profile design. The pressure angle and the principal curvature of the designed cam are analysed using the analytical expression derived for the profile. The requiredNC data equations are obtained by solving the CNC link vari-ables by equating the machine tool ability function with the tool location matrix. The proposed methodology is verified bymachining the designed cylindrical cam using a 4-axis CNCmachine. The inspection results obtained from a 4-axis CMM show that the profile measurements of the machining cam are in excellent agreement with those of the designed profile. The results confirm that themethodology presented in this study enables the camdesign andmanufacturing tasks to be successfully integrated. As a result, the production process is flexible, automatic, cost efficient, and controllable