Implementation of the Slide-O-Cam mechanism in the design of a robot gripper

The aim of this paper is to depict the design of a two finger parallel gripper which implements a cam-follower type transmission. This transmission is based in Slide-O-Cam, a cam mechanism with multiple rollers mounted in a common follower whose purpose is to produce a sliding motion from a rotating drive or vice versa. This transmission provides pure-rolling motion, thereby minimizing friction. To facilitate the understanding of the behavior of the Slide-O-Cam mechanism, the equations of cam profile, pressure angle and force transmited are developed using vector analysis in the field of real numbers. To evaluate the transmission capability of the mechanism, finite element analysis is introduced to calculate the contact stresses on the rollers and on the cams. The final design of the gripper is intended to be used in the three-DOF cartesian manipulator currently under development at Universidad de Guanajuato, México.