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.

The following picture shows three followers that stay in contact with the cam as it rotates.



Video: Cam-Follower Mate

Before adding a cam-follower mate:

  1. Create a cam part:
    1. Create a profile of tangent lines, arcs, and splines. The profile must form a closed loop.
    2. Extrude the profile.
  2. Create a follower part. The portion to mate must be one of the following:
    • Cylindrical face
    • Planar face
    • Vertex
  3. Insert the cam and follower into an assembly and add mates to prevent motion that is extraneous to the intended motion between the cam and follower. For example, constrain the cam to rotate about its axis.
You can investigate cam-follower motion in a layout sketch before creating the models. See Make Path.

To add a cam-follower mate:

  1. Click Mate (Assembly toolbar) or Insert > Mate.
  2. In the PropertyManager, on the Mechanical tab, click Cam .
  3. Under Mate Selections, for Entities to Mate , select a face on the cam.


    All the faces that form the extruded profile of the cam are automatically selected.

  4. Click in Cam follower and select a face or vertex on the cam follower.
  5. Click .
    The follower is mated to all of the cam surfaces, allowing the follower to stay in contact with the cam as it rotates. A cam-follower mate appears in the FeatureManager design tree as CamMateCoincident or CamMateTangent.