COMPUTER-SIMULATION OF A PRESS FEED MECHANISM AND EXPERIMENTAL CONFIRMATION

An experimentally verified simulation of the elastic-dynamic behavior of a lever-type feed mechanism is presented. Based on a combination of experimental and analytical findings, simplified motion equations cou ld be introduced. In the experimental set-up, the motion of the mechan ism is monitored by three angular encoders, which are attached to the drive shaft, the rocker-link shaft, and the feed roller shaft, respect ively. Their output, which is stored in a specially designed data acqu isition system, allows the correlation of the instantaneous rotations of the feed roller and the rocker shafts to that of the drive shaft. S train gages provide in and out-of-plane bending-strain histories of th e bent coupler. Experiment and theory, for different loading condition s, are correlated by way of the coupler strain, the clutch windup angl e and the total feed length. Good qualitative and quantitative agreeme nt between computed and experimental results was found.