Building a Cycloidal Drive with SOLIDWORKS By Omar Younis A Cycloidal Drive is a mechanism used in the engineering world as a speed reducer for an input shaft while reversing its direction. It is able to do this for high ratios in a small space. They do this using a rotor that has a unique motion (see Cycloidal Drive Motion Animation.avi). In this tutorial I will be going over how to make a Cycloidal Drive in SolidWorks. Some of the features that we will be using are the Parametric Feature on the Equation Driven Curve tool and the CAM Mate used in assemblies. There are five main parts to a Cycloidal Drive: the Rotor, the Output Disk (could equally be an output shaft), the Input Shaft, the Rollers and the Main Housing (See Figure 3). Let’s start by making the more complex part of the Cycloidal Drive, the Rotor. Figure 1 Figure 2 Figure 3