Does anyone know how to draw a chain around sprockets in Autodesk Inventor?
You’ll probably need to draw the chain as an assembly then constrain the rollers to the sproket. If you look around you may be able to find a model you can download. If it were me, I would look up the chain pitch and roller diameter and fudge it.
Greg
i did just the same only with treads. it’s a real slow file to work with on the school computers but it’s the only way i can see doing it.
You have the model that precise? Can you rotate your sprockets, too?
Is there a program out there I can download and make a chain ??
http://www.cbliss.com/inventor/Parts/PowerTransmission/
The chain is a set of I-parts and is labeled:
3 Different styles of ANSI chain links. Includes multi row links #25 to #240
28 Links, 28 Connector Links and 28 offset links
I found an ipart of a chain and tried to assemble it in inventor. It took about 20 minutes to make about a foot’s worth of chain. It also made the computer run very very slow. Instead of using chain I just made a rotational constraint between the 2 sprockets that the chain would have gone between. It may not look as realistic, but it works.
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.
I did something similar also…setting a rotational constraint based on the ratio of the two sprockets. With out the program(other computer) infront of me i couldnt tell you how i did it. Basically it demonstrated the sprocket/ratios effect on the final output.
-Pat