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Motion simulation

rb1

Cast Iron
Joined
Nov 10, 2008
Location
AB, Canada
Looking to simulate motion. This is a centrifugal advance mechanism, whereas the blue plate will swing out as RPM increases, thereby moving the grey center plate. Up until now, I have only been able to either eyeball the contact faces and tediously measure the movement of the center cam vs outward travel of the blue plate... or complete an assembly and measure the real world results.

Can anyone suggest an add-on within the Alibre family, or even another program that would accomplish this? Fusion 360? To be clear, I would continue constraining similar to how I am now, but then adding the constraint of the rubbing face for the blue plate to contact face on the grey center cam, so that I can move the blue plate thru its travel, and simulate the grey cam movements with different profiles on either of these parts.

Images show the travel thru operation, which I place by eye.

thank you!

MECHANICAL ADVANCE SIM PIC 1.JPGMECHANICAL ADVANCE SIM PIC 2.JPG
 
A basic assembly can be done in SolidWorks for this. No need for anything more complicated.
 
I've not used constraints (mates?) in Solidworks, but NX was pretty damn nice for constraints and exploded assembly views, etc.
 
Crud... hope this doesn't show up twice.
Alibre's site is a bit... non intuitive. The add-ons appear as a list to the right of the packages and then you have to discern that the word "Motion" leads you to the motion analysis add-ons. Here is a link: Simulation and Animation Addons - Alibre, LLC
Simulab and Simwise products integrate with Alibre but I don't know anything about them... yet. I have a project coming up where I need to do some beam torsion analysis so if you find some success, let us know.
There is also a FEA tab... not sure if you would need to do both pieces of software for the analysis you are thinking about. I suppose that might depend on RPMs!
Interesting part
 








 
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