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Eccentric Cam

An eccentric cam is a disc with its center of rotation offset from its geometric center. As it rotates, this causes the flat follower surface that contacts the cam to rise and fall at a constant rate, providing simple harmonic motion. While more complex cam profiles can be difficult to manufacture, an eccentric cam requires only a circular shape with an offset center and is thus one of the most useful cam designs despite its simplicity. It can be used to convert the rotational motion of a shaft into reciprocating up-and-down motion of a follower.

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Saravanan Viswakarma
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620 views3 pages

Eccentric Cam

An eccentric cam is a disc with its center of rotation offset from its geometric center. As it rotates, this causes the flat follower surface that contacts the cam to rise and fall at a constant rate, providing simple harmonic motion. While more complex cam profiles can be difficult to manufacture, an eccentric cam requires only a circular shape with an offset center and is thus one of the most useful cam designs despite its simplicity. It can be used to convert the rotational motion of a shaft into reciprocating up-and-down motion of a follower.

Uploaded by

Saravanan Viswakarma
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Eccentric Cam

An eccentric cam is a disc with its centre of rotation positioned ‘off centre’. This means as the
cam rotates the flat follower rises and falls at a constant rate. This type of cam is the easiest to
make and yet it is one of the most useful.

The diagrams seen below show the cam rotating in an anticlockwise direction. As it rotates it
pushes the flat follower upwards and then allows it to drop downwards. The movement is smooth
and at a constant speed.

Cams with complex profiles can be complicated to manufacture, particularly with the type of
equipment available in the school workshop. However, if all that is required is to produce a
single up and down motion for every revolution on the cam, a circular cam rotating about a point
offset from its centre (i.e. eccentric), will often suffice.

An Eccentric Cam would normally provide the follower with Simple Harmonic Motion - (this
can be defined as the projection of a point on the diameter of a circle as it processes around it
with constant angular velocity).

Note that the cam follower need not just move up and down in a reciprocating motion, but it can
be a lever as shown, which will produce oscillating motion.
Eccentric-and-rod mechanism

Eccentric-and-rod mechanism, arrangement of mechanical parts used to obtain a reciprocating


straight-line motion from a rotating shaft; it serves the same purpose as a slider-crank mechanism
and is particularly useful when the required stroke of the reciprocating motion is small in
comparison with the dimensions of the driving shaft. In the figure, the eccentric disk 2 is fixed
off centre to the rotating shaft at A and has an eccentricity AB. The strap and rod 3 consist of
two pieces clamped together in a sliding fit in a groove on the periphery of the disk. The rod is
connected to the piston 4 within a housing 1. As the eccentric rotates with the shaft, it slides
inside the strap, and the piston 4 moves on a straight path of length 2AB. AB is equivalent to the
crankshaft and BC is equivalent to the connecting rod of a slider-crank mechanism. Because an
eccentric can be attached anywhere along a shaft it is unnecessary to form any part of the shaft
into a crank. Eccentrics are seldom used to transmit large forces because friction loss would be
high; they are commonly used to drive the valve gears of engines.

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