ABSTRACT
There is a good amount of similarity between disk cam mechanisms with oscil-lating followers and gear pairs, where the tooth of the pinion acts as a cam, while the active tooth of the driven gear is the follower. ¬e Œrst obvious diŠerence between cam mechanisms and gears is that during the meshing process, constantly new teeth (the equivalent of cam-follower pairs) make contact, while others separate. ¬e other diŠerence is that the angular velocity of the gear over that of the pinion must remain constant, although noncircular gears can be designed, where this velocity ratio is some given function of the pinion angle. In this chapter, several Working Model 2D and AutoLISP applications will be described, which can be used to demonstrate how involute gears operate and how their proŒles are generated. Working Model 2D, or WM 2D in short, available from Design Simulation Technologies (www.design-simulation.com), is a planar multibody so®ware capable of performing kinematic and dynamic simulation of interconnected bodies subject to constraints. WM 2D allows for DXF import/export and has scripting capabilities through formula and WM Basic language systems.
