We show how to design cam profiles using NURBS curves whose support fu
nctions are appropriately scaled trigonometric splines. In particular,
we discuss the design of cams with various side conditions of practic
al interest, such as interpolation conditions, constant diameter, mini
mal acceleration or jerk, and constant dwells. In contrast to general
polynomial curves, these NURBS curves have the useful property that th
eir offsets are of the same type, and hence also have an exact NURBS r
epresentation.