Machine Kinematics
solved, then drawn
Concept

Six-bar — where it appears

A planar mechanism of six links and seven pins, of which there are exactly two chains and five mechanisms. Watt's and Stephenson's chains differ only in whether their two ternary links share a pin, and the extra dyad over a four-bar buys a dwell, a longer reach or a second output.

Named by 10 essays across 5 fields — each of them below, with the objects they name alongside it.

Watt's chain. Six links and 7 pin joints, so Grübler counts 3(6 − 1) − 2(7) = 1 and the rank of the Jacobian measures 1. Two of the six links must carry three joints; they are shaded. Here they share a joint, which makes this a Watt chain. That adjacency is the entire classification, and it is read off the graph rather than off the picture.

Six bars, and what the extra dyad buys

Every linkage so far has had four bars, because four is the smallest closed chain that moves. The next one up is six, not five, and six is where the subject stops being one family and becomes a taxonomy — two chains, distinguished entirely by whether the two links carrying three joints happen to touch.

linkages · Synthesis A dwell is a measurement, not a stop. The Stephenson six-bar's output against a full turn of the crank, with the four-bar it is built on for comparison. Inside a band of ±1° the six-bar's output holds still for 145.8° of crank and the four-bar's for 41.9°. The dwell comes from a stretch of the coupler curve that fits a circle of radius 3.006 to within 2.96e-3, and the arm from the coupler point is that radius. Nothing here stops; it moves less than the band.

A dwell made from a curve

Parts of a coupler curve are very nearly circular arcs. Put a link of the arc's own radius on the coupler point and its far end stands almost still while the point runs along it, so the output dwells — 146° of crank inside a one-degree band, against 42° for the four-bar it is built on. A dwell linkage does not stop. It moves less than the tolerance, and how much less is a number.

linkages · Synthesis 20,000 four-bars, and not one with three circuits. 20,000 four-bars with the ground at one and the other three lengths drawn from 0.05 to 3, each counted exactly. crank-rocker: 3,031, of which 3,031 have two circuits, 0 have one and 0 cannot be assembled; double crank: 3,086, of which 3,086 have two circuits, 0 have one and 0 cannot be assembled; Grashof double rocker: 1,497, of which 1,497 have two circuits, 0 have one and 0 cannot be assembled; triple rocker (non-Grashof): 12,386, of which 0 have two circuits, 9,528 have one and 2,858 cannot be assembled. The most circuits any linkage has is 2.

Never three circuits

A four-bar has one circuit or two, and twenty thousand random four-bars counted exactly contain no exception. The reason is a count of four points where the two assemblies merge, which makes the configuration curve a curve of genus one, and Harnack's theorem allows a real curve of genus one two pieces and no more. A six-bar's curve has genus five or seven, and its circuits go to four and six.

algebra · Algebra Where enumerating the corners stops being affordable. The two routes to a tolerance band, costed against the number of toleranced lengths. Enumerating every extreme combination is 2ⁿ mechanisms at every crank position; differentiating the constraints is n linear solves. A four-bar is 16 corners and a Watt six-bar is 128, which is still cheap — 142 solves for one position — and the curve is the point rather than either number: at twenty parameters, which is an ordinary spatial mechanism, the corner route is a million mechanisms and the derivative route is twenty. Both are drawn because the corner route is not merely slower, it is the one that assumes nothing, and its answer is what the cheap route has to be checked against.

Seven lengths and a hundred corners

Nothing in a tolerance analysis is about four. A Watt six-bar has seven lengths, its corner enumeration is 128 mechanisms rather than 16, and the two routes still agree to a hundredth of a per cent — but the costs have separated — 142 solves against seven. At twenty parameters, which is an ordinary spatial mechanism, it is a million against twenty.

practice · Tolerance A dwell six-bar built on the vertex of a symmetric coupler curve. The four-bar with ground 3, crank 1, and coupler, rocker and arm all 2.5, with the angle at the rocker pin set to 120.8024°, so that its coupler curve is its own mirror image about the dashed line. The curve crosses that line at crank angle 0°, and a link of the osculating radius there, 5.7691, runs from the tracing point to a pin at the centre of curvature; an output link of 3 from a third ground pivot holds that pin, square to the dwell link at the vertex. Faintly, the dwell link and output 50° of crank either side. The output swings 7.43° over a whole turn, and near the vertex its angle changes only at sixth order in the crank's.

The flattest dwell is not the longest

A coupler curve that is its own mirror image has no odd terms in its distance from a circle centred on the mirror line, so one angle of the coupler can remove the fourth-order term and leave a dwell of sixth order, with no search of the curve. A six-bar built there dwells for 58.7° of crank inside 0.1% of its swing. Turned two degrees away from that angle it dwells for 80.1°, and the searched six-bar for 24.4°.

curves · Coupler How many times each curve passes through the circular points. For each body of five machines, the degree of the curve a point on it draws, from a random complex line, and the number of finite points where that curve meets a line through the circular point I, x + iy = c, and one through J, x − iy = c. The difference is how many times the curve passes through that circular point. Four-bar, crank: degree 2, 1 and 1 finite, circularity 1; four-bar, coupler: degree 6, 3 and 3 finite, circularity 3; four-bar, rocker: degree 2, 1 and 1 finite, circularity 1; Watt six-bar, coupler: degree 6, 3 and 3 finite, circularity 3; Watt six-bar, second coupler: degree 6, 3 and 3 finite, circularity 3; Watt six-bar, output: degree 2, 1 and 1 finite, circularity 1; Stephenson six-bar, coupler: degree 6, 3 and 3 finite, circularity 3; Stephenson six-bar, arm: degree 18, 9 and 9 finite, circularity 9; Stephenson six-bar, output: degree 2, 1 and 1 finite, circularity 1; slider-crank, crank: degree 2, 1 and 1 finite, circularity 1; slider-crank, coupler: degree 4, 3 and 3 finite, circularity 1; elliptic trammel, rod: degree 2, 2 and 2 finite, circularity 0. Every body of the three machines built from pins alone has circularity exactly half its degree; the slider-crank's coupler curve and the trammel's ellipse do not.

Nine times through each circular point

A line through a circular point meets a curve at that point once for every time the curve passes through it, so counting its finite meetings measures how often, with no equation. The Stephenson six-bar's arm curve, degree eighteen, meets such lines in nine finite points: it passes nine times through each circular point. Every curve drawn by a body of a machine built from pins alone does this at exactly half its degree; a slide breaks it.

algebra · Algebra A drag link driving a crank-rocker at a phase of 284.8°. A drag link, ground 1, crank 2.5, coupler 2.25, output 1.5, whose output crank carries the crank of a crank-rocker with a 60° swing, ground 1.2223, crank 0.4783, coupler 1.1298, output 1, turned 284.8° ahead of it, drawn at an input angle of 40°. The two cranks on the middle pivot are one rigid part. The thick arc at the right is the rocker's swing. At this phase the whole machine returns 2.71 times as fast as it works; the crank-rocker alone, driven at constant speed, returns 1.2 times as fast.

A drag link ahead of a crank-rocker

A crank-rocker with a 60° swing keeps a transmission angle of 40° only up to a time ratio of 1.207, and at a ratio of 2 no crank-rocker keeps even 20°. Drive its crank from the output of a drag link, whose cranks both turn but not at the same speed, and a pair in which each stage keeps 40° returns 2.71 times as fast as it works. The phase between the two stages decides almost all of it: the same two linkages give anything from 1.003 to 2.71.

linkages · Fourbar Nine parameters, two of them invisible. A Watt six-bar has seven lengths, a fraction that says where a point rides on its rocker, and a third ground pivot with two coordinates. Reading its output link with a protractor over 28 poses gives a matrix of rank 7: two directions are invisible, at 8.24e-10 and 5.06e-10 against a largest of 7.49e+0. One is scaling the whole machine, with a zero against the fraction, because a fraction is not a length. The other is scaling the second loop alone about O₄ — that loop is a four-bar in its own right and its own size does not reach the output angle. The two wrong guesses a reader would try, scaling those five parameters about O₂ or scaling the first loop alone, are refused at 1.5e-1 and 2.0e-1.

Nine parameters, two of them invisible

A Watt six-bar has seven lengths, a fraction and a ground pivot's two coordinates. Read by a protractor on its output link, its identification Jacobian has rank seven — and the second missing direction is not a scaling of the machine at all. It is a scaling of the second loop alone, about the pivot the two loops share.

metrology · Parameter Three laws in the band: a third, a sixth and a sixth. For bands from 3% to 10 ppm of the output's swing, three things measured on the symmetric six-bar itself: the longest dwell at any angle at the rocker pin, the dwell at the sixth-order angle γ = 120.8024°, and how far below γ the best angle sits. The dots are measurements and the lines are the two-term model's predictions from two coefficients read off the output's even part. Over the four tightest bands the fitted exponents are 0.173, 0.172 and 0.333, against a sixth, a sixth and a third. At 10 ppm the best angle is 0.490° below γ against a prediction of 0.488°, and the dwell at γ is 26.43° against 26.23°. The loosest bands sit above the lines, where the terms the model leaves out are no longer small.

The dip that buys the dwell

A symmetric coupler curve's six-bar dwells longest a little below the angle that makes its error sixth order, and three bands gave three numbers. Across three and a half decades of tolerance the best angle's distance from that angle grows as the cube root of the band, both dwells as its sixth root, and their ratio is (27/4)^(1/6) = 1.3747 at every band — because the best machine spends the whole band on one dip and ends its dwell where the output comes back.

curves · Coupler How evenly the rocker is driven through the working stroke. The rocker's speed through the working stroke, divided by its mean over the stroke, against the fraction of the stroke's duration, for a crank-rocker with a 60° swing and a time ratio of 1.2 of its own, ground 1.2223, crank 0.4783, coupler 1.1298, output 1. Every curve must start and end at nought, because the rocker stops to reverse; what differs is the middle. The number after each name is the fastest speed over the slowest while the rocker covers the central 80% of its swing. Driven directly at constant speed the crank-rocker gives 1.91 at a time ratio of 1.20. The drag link that gives the highest time ratio, 2.71, gives 2.77: a hump in the middle of the cut. The most even design that still reaches 2, a drag link of ground 1, crank 5, coupler 4.5, output 2.25, gives 1.21 at a ratio of 2.03 — more even than the crank-rocker alone. Dragging moves that design's phase.

A quick return that cuts evenly

A drag link ahead of a crank-rocker buys a shaper its time ratio of 2 with both stages at 40°. The drag link that buys the most ratio drives the cut unevenly — its fastest speed through the middle of the stroke is 2.77 times its slowest — and a different drag link at a different phase reaches 2.03 with a ratio of 1.21, which is more even than the crank-rocker driven alone at constant speed. Up to a ratio of about 2.4 the second stage can improve both specifications at once.

linkages · Fourbar

Named alongside it

The objects these essays reach for when they reach for this one.

DwellCoupler curveToleranceCrank-rockerDesign ruleGenusLimit positionOsculating circleQuick-returnStephenson chainSymmetryTransmission angle

All concepts