INTEGRATION OF COMPUTER AIDED DESIGN AND COMPUTER AIDED MANUFACTURING FOR CAMS DRIVING MECHANISMS

摘要

Cams are widely used to control the motion of mechanisms of automatic machines. The integrated system developed in cooperation with the Catholic University of Louvain consists of three programs: CAM: computer aided design of cams KAVM: computer aided design of mechanisms NCCAM: computer aided manufacturing Each program can run individually, but the full power of the system lies in the close cooperation of the programs exchanging data to each other. A cam-driven mechanism can be designed as follows: the user chooses a law of motion (e.g.trapezoidal) for the component driven by the mechanism. The program CAM generates the data for the lift, velocity and acceleration of the law of motion. These data are used in the program KAVM to study their effect on all elements of the mechanism; as the final result the requested lift, velocity and acceleration of the driving link are generated. These quantities determine the main characteristics of the driving cam, the dimensions of which are then fully computed by the program CAM. The evaluation of a design is greatly simplified by the graphic display of any characteristic on a CRT. At any time the user has the opportunity to modify interactively his design. Finally the program NCCAM is used to generate the paper tape according to the format specifications of the user's NC-machine.