Inspecting Profile Errors of Conjugate Disk Cams With Coordinate Measurement

To inspect cam profile errors, a coordinate measuring machine (CMM) is frequently employed. The coordinate data of discrete points at the cam surface are measured by a CMM in order to further evaluate the actual cam profile with complicated interpolation algorithms, and then the cam contour approximated by these algorithms may be compared with the theoretical one. In this paper, a direct and simple analytical method, instead of a numerical interpolation algorithm, is proposed for inspecting the profile deviations of conjugate disk cams with coordinate measurement data. The method is based on the derived correlation between the radial-dimension errors and the normal-direction errors of conjugate cam profiles. To verify the proposed method, an experiment of inspecting a pair of conjugate disk cam profiles was conducted. The experimental results obtained from the proposed method were compared with those obtained by using the Hermite interpolation method. It shows that this method is accurate and more efficient for inspecting the profile errors of conjugate disk cams.