Non-undercutting conditions of roller gear cams

Abstract

The undercutting conditions in a planar cam can be predicted by comparing the radius of the curvatures of the pitch curves with the radius of the cutter. For the complexity of the spatial cam generation, the principle radius of the curvatures and the directions of the generated cam surface are different from point to point along the pitch curve so that predicting the undercutting condition becomes very difficult. The undercutting conditions on the roller gear cams use the concept of limiting conjugate motion generation. In this study, the feasible design region without undercutting is presented. The investigation results are very useful to the designer and the manufacturing engineer for understanding the undercutting characteristics of the roller gear cam.