Sensitivity and robustness of mechanism balancing

The sensitivity formulae of the shaking force and shaking moment of general planar articulating mechanisms are derived. The importance of the sensitivity analysis and robust balancing is illustrated by a numerical example of a four-bar mechanism. The sensitivity and robustness of the complete force balancing result and the optimum force and moment balancing result ro the link mass parameters are analyzed separately. A new robust balancing method that is not sensitive to the processing errors in manufacture is presented. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.