Cam clutch
AssigneeTsubakimoto Chain Co.
InventorEiichi Nakagawa
Life of this patent
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Abstract
An object of the present invention is to provide a cam and a one-way cam clutch that realize a reduction in weight and production cost, provide more design freedom in setting the center of gravity of the cam, and achieve high responsiveness. The above object is achieved by a cam configured to make contact with an inner race and an outer race by a rotational moment applied in an engaged direction by an annular spring, in which a plurality of cam plates having an identical outer contour and arranged in parallel along a direction of the pivot axis are coupled together and united by a connecting pin extending in the direction of the pivot axis, and the annular spring is configured to be mountable between adjacent cam plates and/or on an outer side of the plurality of cam plates in the direction of the pivot axis.
Claims16
A cam clutch comprising:
- an inner race and an outer race provided to be rotatable about a same rotation axis relative to each other;
- a plurality of cams circumferentially arranged between the inner race and the outer race;
- and
- a biasing means biasing each of the plurality of cams to make contact with the inner race and the outer race,
- the cam clutch including an operating mode switch mechanism that switches operating modes of the cam clutch,
- the operating mode switch mechanism including cam orientation changers that are movable to force the cams to rotate independently of rotation movement of the inner race and the outer race,
- the cam orientation changers each being positioned for each of the cams,
- one of the cam orientation changers has different relative position with respect to one of corresponding cams from a relative position of other cam orientation changers with respect to the other cams, so that the one of the cams is rotated at a different timing from the other cams.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.