Mechanical Mates Mechanical mates include cam-follower, gear, hinge, rack and pinion, screw, slot, and universal joint mates. Contents Cam-Follower Mates A cam-follower mate is a type of tangent or coincident mate. It allows you to mate a cylinder, plane, or point to a series of tangent extruded faces, such as you would find on a cam. Gear Mates Gear mates force two components to rotate relative to one another about selected axes. Valid selections for the axis of rotation for gear mates include cylindrical and conical faces, axes, and linear edges. Hinge Mates A hinge mate limits the movement between two components to one rotational degree of freedom. It has the same effect as adding a concentric mate plus a coincident mate. You can limit the angular movement between the two components. Rack and Pinion Mates With rack and pinion mates, linear translation of one component (the rack) causes circular rotation in another component (the pinion), and vice versa. You can mate any two components to have this type of movement relative to each other. The components do not need to have gear teeth. Screw Mate A Screw mate constrains two components to be concentric, and also adds a pitch relationship between the rotation of one component and the translation of the other. Translation of one component along the axis causes rotation of the other component according to the pitch relationship. Likewise, rotation of one component causes translation of the other component. Slot Mates You can mate bolts to straight or arced slots and you can mate slots to slots. You can select an axis, cylindrical face, or a slot to create slot mates. Universal Joint Mate In a Universal Joint mate, the rotation of one component (the output shaft) about its axis is driven by the rotation of another component (the input shaft) about its axis. Parent topicTypes of Mates Related concepts Standard Mates Advanced Mates