Building a Cycloidal Drive with SOLIDWORKS

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Collapsed Cycloidal Drive Rendering
Collapsed View of Cycloidal Drive

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).

 

Image of the Exploded View of the Cycloidal Drive
Exploded View of Cycloidal Drive

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.

The tutorial can be downloaded by clicking the link below:
Tutorial Cycloidal Drive with SOLIDWORKS

Reference Material:
Cycloidal Drive Motion Animation
Cycloidal Drive Explode Animation
Cycloidal Drive SOLIDWORKS Files

This Cycloidal Drive was made using information provided by Joong-Ho Shin and Soon-Man Kwon’s paper “On the lobe profile design in a cycloid reducer using instant velocity center”
www.elsevier.com/locate/mechmt

Omar Younis

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