DEVELOPMENT OF THE COMPOSITE FLEXSPLINE FOR A CYCLOID-TYPE HARMONIC DRIVE USING NET SHAPE MANUFACTURING METHOD

The flexspline for a harmonic drive must be flexible in the radial dir ection for the elastic deformation, but must be stiff in the torsional direction for accurate transmission of rotational motion. Since these requirements cannot be satisfied simultaneously with conventional met als such as steel or aluminium, in this work the carbon fiber epoxy co mposite material was employed for the flexspline material in order to increase the torsional stiffness by tailoring the stacking sequence an d to improve the manufacturing productivity by moulding rather than ma chining. The toothed composite flexspline was manufactured with the el astomeric cascade tooling that is composed of the steel tooth die, the silicon rubber mandrel and the cone-shaped steel core. Also, the stee l flexspline with the same dimensions of the composite flexspline was manufactured by CNC wire cutting method. The static and dynamic perfor mances of the composite flexspline and the steel flexspline were exper imentally tested. From the test results, it was frequency.