Kinematic analysis of bevel-gear trains using graphs

Abstract

The non-oriented and oriented graph techniques are used for kinematic analysis of bevelgear trains. In both techniques, the kinematic structure of the gear trains is represented by a graph. Although the non-oriented graphs are simple to draw, they are used only to determine the carrier nodes of the fundamental circuits. On the other hand, the oriented graphs carry more information than the non-oriented graphs since each line in an oriented graph represents a pair of complementary variables. In this paper, these two techniques are compared and the advantages of the oriented graph technique are demonstrated by the kinematic analysis of an articulated robotic mechanism used by the Cincinnati Milacron T-3.