A New Design of Cycloidal Planetary Reducer With Internal Cycloidal Profile

Abstract

Compared with other speed reducers, the two-stage cycloidal planetary one also known as RV reducer has higher precision, higher mechanical efficiency, higher loading capacity as well as long service life. These characteristics make it attractive for industrial applications, especially for robotics applications and machine tools, where high precision and large torque transmission are required. The traditional RV reducer uses cycloidal drive which is comprised of the cycloidal wheel and the pins. It has some disadvantages in the pin design, because of small clearance between the pin and the cycloidal wheel, the collision between the pin and the cycloidal wheel may lead to unstable stress in the key parts and output velocity fluctuation. This paper presents an innovative cycloidal planetary reducer using internal meshing principle instead of external meshing between cycloidal wheel and pins in traditional RV reducer. In the new design of the reducer, the internal teeth with cycloidal profile are processed inside the reducer housing, meshing with two pin holders which are placed at the inner side of the cycloidal teeth to achieve transmission. The pin holder is a new integral structure of pins integrated on a round plate. Then a comparison study is conducted through establishment of system dynamics analysis. The transmission characteristics and meshing force of both the new type of reducer and the traditional RV reducer are analyzed under the same condition of reduction ratio. The results show the new reducer improves on these shortcomings, its transmission performance is competitive as compared to traditional RV reducer. What’s even better is that its output speed is more stable, and the contact force between the pin position on the pin holder and the internal cycloidal teeth inside the reducer housing is smaller, as well as the contact frequency is obviously decreased.