Low cost articulating/articulating and rotating wrist mechanism for

Abstract

A simple, low mass, low cost, articulating/articulating and rotating wrist assembly for use on automatic machine tools to provide two important degrees of freedom of movement of an end effector tool in the form of an articulating motion either alone or in conjunction with a rotating motion. Where both rotation and articulation are used the sequence is important in order to obtain new and different movements of the end effector tool for transcribing cones, etc. The fundamental articulating motion is achieved through the kinematics of a primary, parallelogram-type pantograph driven remotely from the automatic machine tool and employing a secondary restraining mechanism either in the form of a secondary parallelogram-type restraining pantograph or a cluster of sun, idler and planet gears. The wrist assembly can be used in conjunction with any of the known automatic placement machine tools whether operable only along a single dimensional axis, within a plane defined by two orthogonal axes or a three dimensional space. The configurations and relative size and length and location of the linkages comprising the pantograph are dictated by the particular amplitude and sector of motions in space that are required for any given application for which the wrist mechanism is designed and the kind of scribing movement of the working tool desired.