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Cam mechanisms are used as the control system in several industrial fields such as filling and canning, textiles, automotive. This paper introduces the development of a software for designing planar cam mechanism adapting the dynamic and kinematic requirements. The designed cam profile is then changed into numerical data used to generate the machine codes served for CNC-based fabrication. Traditional cam design is very complicated and has accumulated errors. The envelope theory and inverse method are utilized to perform constraint in pressure angle and motion. The smallest cam radius is then determined in a non-linear optimization adapting the constraints. The paper also presents the design of a CNC machine for cam profile fabrication. The design includes the control system and the circuit board. The CNC control program is built to receive numerical data from cam design section, to simulate the cam profile fabrication and then to fabricate. The optimal design and fabrication are applied to the cam mechanisms with knife-edge/roller reciprocating/oscilating followers. The verification shows that the designed and fabricated cam adapts the requirement of accuracy.

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One of the challenges of using an endoscopic robot for natural orifice transluminal endoscopic surgery (NOTES) is the ability to adjust its joint stiffness. The endoscopic robot joint needs low stiffness to move through paths in the human body without damaging tissues and high stiffness to keep its shape. This paper presents a variable stiffness manipulator for the endoscopic robot in NOTES. The manipulator has a backbone tube that uses a thermoplastic material, polyethylene terephthalate glycol (PETG), with a temperature effect to change the stiffness. The backbone of the robot is designed with a heating coil, cooling tube, and thermal sensor to adjust the temperature. Analysis and experiments were conducted to evaluate and find the backbone structure with a large range of stiffness modulations, a short heating time, and a short cooling time. This paper also presents a temperature control system that controls the temperature to maintain the stiffness of the robot in real-time. The stiffness characterization, heating time, and cooling time of the robot and the response of the temperature controller, are tested experimentally. The results confirm that the endoscopic robot can be changed and maintained at some stiffness values.