Spherical Rod Ends: A How-To

This is my first How-To and something I'm not ENTIRELY sure will work in all cases, but I thought I should take a shot.


Alot of us use spherical rod ends aka heim jointsin Mechanism by creating a simple Ball connection between the center of Ball and Body spheres of the two joints, however this causes problems since it doesn't allow for any limitation on how far the rod end can misalign:


View attachment 2361


A simple way to prevent this limitation involves creating a cam connection between the two parts:


1. Create a Ball connection between the two parts in standard mode.


2. Open up Mechanism and go to Drag mode. Move the Ball part so it is relatively close to the inside of the edge as shown:


View attachment 2362


3. Open up the Cam Connections and create a new one using two references. The first reference will be the ball surface:


View attachment 2363


NOTE: Make sure the arrow is pointing outwards. If not, Flip it.


4. The second reference will be inside edge of the body:


View attachment 2364


Note: Make sure the arrow is point INWARDS. If not, again flip it.


5. Go to the properties tab and Enable Liftoff. Complete the defenition/


6. Go to Drag mode again and try to move the rod end. You'll see that it is limited to the two surfaces touching each other.


View attachment 2365


I hope this has been helpful. Please respond with your comment and questions!





Matt

That's cool but I dont think it's necessary for WF3 which has collision detection, and can stop the rotatation without a cam.

I was looking for this identical application. Will give it a try and see how it works out.


How can you read minds? LOL

It is refreshing to see someone post with a really cool tip, rather than a question (too often in poor english).



Thanks for the tip. I'm sure I'll be adapting the techniques to some oddball thing I need to be doing in the near future.

Hi Folks,


Went through the tutorial...great stuff.....exactly what I wanted to do.... except my rod end does'nt work....(sigh).....


Instead of having a stud through the ball I'm usingan open rod end ...McMaster-Carr part #59915k25.


I defined my part exactly as shown and even put small protrusions to use as the surface for the cam ...all the symbols are there except the functionality...the center swivals beyond the edge of the rod end......I'm stumped. View attachment 2573

ok.....it seems when I "Enable Liftoff" the cam functionality goes out the window.....


Any suggestions...? We're running Pro-E 2001 build 2003450
Edited by: JohnnyBoy