189 NUMERICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL ANALYSIS OF CAM PROFILES WITH CIRCULAR-ARCS MARCO CECCARELLI, CHIARA LANNI, GIUSEPPE CARBONE LARM: Laboratory of Robotics and Mechatronics DIMSAT, University of Cassino Via Di Biasio 43 - 03043 Cassino (FR), Italy Abstract Cam profiles with circular arcs can be useful for low-cost transmissions and for applications in micro-machines. They have been usually designed by means of graphical techniques. Recently, at LARM in Cassino a research line addresses the attention to the problems of modern design and characterization of cams with circular-arc profiles by looking at computer- oriented formulations and by investigating experimentally the operation characteristics. In this paper, we have overviewed the achieved results also with an attempt to an extension to a general case that we think can be useful for studying and validating any planar cam profile. The approach is of algebraic nature since it is based on the geometry of the mechanical design of circular-arc profiles by using their peculiarity. The experimental analysis has been conceived by preserving the low-cost easy-operation performances of the circular-arc profiles by using a suitable test-bed that has been designed at LARM in Cassino. The results of experimental tests are useful to validate both the numerical design procedure and designed cam profiles. Examples are reported to illustrate the practical engineering feasibility of the proposed analysis procedures for circular- arc cam profiles. Introduction A cam transmission is a machine component, which is used to transmit mainly motion aspect of power from one part to another mechanical element by direct surface contact. Generally, a cam is a mechanism, which is composed of three fundamental kinematic components (Chen, 1982; Scotto Lavina, 1971): a cam, which is a driving element; a follower, which is a driven element ; and and a fixed frame. Cam mechanisms are installed even in most IX. INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON THE THEORY OF MACHINES AND MECHANISMS in association with the II. CEACM Conference on Computational Mechanics August 31 – Sept.2, 2004 - LIBEREC, CZECH REPUBLIC TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY OF LIBEREC DEPARTMENT OF TEXTILE MACHINE DESIGN Marco Ceccarelli, phone: +39-0776-2993663, fax: +39-0776-2993711, ceccarelli@unicas.it Chiara Lanni, phone: +39-0776-2993388, fax: +39-0776-2993711, lanni@unicas.it Giuseppe Carbone, phone: +39-0776-2993664, fax: +39-0776-2993711, carbone@unicas.it