On the Grand 4R Four-Bar Based Inherently Balanced Linkage Architecture

Abstract

Force balance is an important feature in high-speed machinery to move fast without base vibrations and in large moving structures to move safely and with minimal effort. Advantageous balanced linkages can be synthesized from inherently balanced linkage architectures, i.e. linkages with solely the essential kinematic relations for balance. The center of mass of such a linkage is in a stationary point in one of the links for all motion. In this paper it is shown that the known 4R four-bar based inherently balanced linkage architecture is only part of the complete or grand 4R four-bar based inherently balanced linkage architecture, which is presented here. It is shown that this architecture comprises all related theories and that they all depend on principal vectors. Also various new balanced linkages are derived.