A New Method of Torque Compensation for High Speed Indexing Cam Mechanism

Severe vibration and poor positioning accuracy may occur in an indexing cam mechanism operating at a high speed. Torque fluctuation of the input shaft and the resulting fluctuation of kinetic energy of the mechanism may be the major cause of the vibration. In this paper a method is proposed to minimize the fluctuation by using a so-called “speed-varying flywheel” that produces an opposite kinetic energy fluctuation that can counteract the effect of the energy fluctuation. The flywheel is installed on the output shaft of an additional cam-linkage mechanism. The parameter of the cam-linkage mechanism is optimized. An example is given to demonstrate the effectiveness of this method.