Measurement and evaluation of form deviation error of disk cam with an exclusively built profile-measuring machine

To evaluate the manufacturing precision of disk cams, an effective measurement method with an exclusively built profile-measuring machine and subsequent data analysis procedure is proposed. The profile-measuring machine consisted of a rotating table and sensing devices interfaced to a PC. This machine could provide sufficient measured data with just one revolving scan of the profile for evaluation of the form deviation error of disk cams. The design and measurement data were interpolated by cubic spline curves to compute the manufacturing precision error, which is defined by the maximum and minimum distances between two curves. The minimum zone criterion (MZC) of ISO was employed to evaluate the form deviation error. The proposed system was applied to marine engine cams, and it required only 5 min to measure and analyze the form deviation error of a cam. With a conventional coordinate measuring machine (CMM), the same error measurement would require over 1 h even with a skilled operator.