CAM Shaft Animation

[tlehnhaeuser]

Does Anyone know how to animate the action of a pushrod around the surface of an oblong cam? Any help is appreciated.

Tom

 

Cam.bmp

[Guest IronKevin]

My gut reaction would say you will have to approximate it with a Custom path animation. I'll try some things when if get time this afternoon.

 

IronKevin

 

 

[tlehnhaeuser]

Thanks Kevin. I didn't think about the custom animation side of it.

 

 

[Guest jkim522093]

If you mean the animation as in the following fig, I think this is not possible

to make the animation for the pushrod which follows to the surface of rotating

oblong cam.

To make it possible, in my opinion, there should be the feature of Constraint

for face to face in IronCAD.

(As far as I know, Inventor support this.)

In IronCAD, we have limited constraints in 3D scene, but they are all for

2D lines and curve. Except these constraints, we could use Mate Align

Constraints to the 3D geometry, but it has no feature to mate the face to

face.

 

I already asked to add this feature and hope to have it in next release.

[Chris Lohman]

jkim this animation is possible, it's just not automated. You simply create custom animation paths for the pushrod and the cam and setup their timing so that they are synchronized.

 

Yes having something setup so that if you move one part other parts automatically move according to rules would be useful. But it isn't "impossible" with animation to do this now, you just have to do it all by hand.

 

 

[tlehnhaeuser]

Jkim - That is exactly what I want to do. But Chris, I am not exactly sure how to do this through custom animation. I assume the pushrod must move back and forth on a linear move path. But I do not understand how to accurately have this linear motion timed with the cam B-spline type movement.

Tom

 

 

[Chris Lohman]

This animated gif is a horrible rendering but hopefully you can see that with effort this can be done. When I say effort though.....Just this alone took about 9 hours. This animation is an example so I only setup the paths to closely match. You will see some overlapping geometry in the animation that with additional effort could be straightened out. I am attaching the 5.2 scene file if you want to play with it and I will build a tutorial on how to do this some time next week.

 

 

 

 

cam.gif

cam_animation.ics

[Guest IronKevin]

Now can you show an entire engine animated?

 

 

 

 

[tlehnhaeuser]

Thanks Chris, I appreciate all the help on this issue. When I am done with my Engine Animation. I will send you a copy.

Tom