Design of the high-speed cam profile for the multi-DOF follower

The multi-degree-of-freedom (multi-DOF) follower may suffer from unwanted vibrations when the cam works at the high speed. The vibrations will cause significant problems of positioning accuracy, noise, wear, forces, and operating costs for the cam-follower mechanism. It is challenging to design high-speed cam profiles for multi-DOF followers because of the complicated dynamics. A novel method is presented to design the cam profile in this article. A polynomial profile filters through a continuous-piecewise smoother to produce the cam profile. While the profile and their derivatives are continuous, the profile provides good performance on the vibration reduction for multi-DOF followers. Simulated and experimental results from a flexible-link manipulator validate the effectiveness of the cam profiles created by the new method.