Balancing of a 3-dofs parallel manipulator

Abstract

This chapter gives an overview on static and dynamic balancing. Basic approaches are discussed for achieving the design of mechanisms having a fully balanced behavior under different operation conditions. A formulation is proposed to address the effects of balancing on mass distributions and dynamic performance. The proposed formulation is applied for the dynamic balancing of a three DOFs (degrees-of-freedom) spatial parallel manipulator, namely CaPaMan 2bis (Cassino Parallel Manipulator 2bis). This parallel manipulator has three identical legs, where each leg is composed by a four-bar mechanism, an orthogonal revolute joint, and a spherical joint that is attached on the mobile platform. The proposed solution for achieving the balancing of CaPaMan 2bis is based on the use of counterrotary counterweights. The obtained results are validated by simulations by using a general-purpose software for multi-body dynamics analysis.