MINN-DWELL - COMPUTER AIDED DESIGN AND ANALYSIS OF LINKAGE-TYPE DWELL MECHANISMS.

Dwell mechanisms have numerous applications in industry, especially for automation. Linkages are less expensive to manufacture and maintain and can be superior to cams at high speeds. Unfortunately, linkage-type dwell mechanisms are less popular due to lack of proper design tools. This paper describes the results of an effort to provide a tool to help overcome this technological barrier - MINN-DWELL. Design experience has been transformed into three simple computer-based design catalogs as pre-programmed building blocks to help design dwell linkages intelligently and efficiently. The resulting program, MINN-DWELL, embodies this new methodology and provides numerous graphics features. These features render MINN-DWELL an extremely flexible design tool, greatly reducing the design time. Using graphically-presented 'design catalogs' (building blocks), the user can also design four-bar mechanisms that generate approximate straight lines or symmetrical paths.