Drawing #35 Chain

[petek]

Originally Posted by psychoCHIPMUNKK

How would you constrain the chain to the sprockets so that it runs as it should in real life when you're driving the constraints?

Smart-aleck answer: with great difficulty!

Mentor answer: Maybe someone smarter than I has gotten this to work, but I have yet to get more than three links to follow a constrained path around two sprockets. But, since three links can do it, I feel that it should be possible to do a whole loop of links. The links were constrained to each other by their pivot pin centerlines and mated on one side plate.

To control the motion, I used a common Inventor motion animation cheat: I created a surface which is the path that is tangent to the inside of the link rollers as they contact the sprockets and move between them - kind of like if you stretched a rubberband around the chain path. I then used a tangent constraint to "hold" the link rollers to the path.

I'll try to remember to post the files on Streamline next week, in case anyone wants to drive themselves crazy trying to make it work with more links.