Design modification of an automatic mouldboard profilograph

Abstract

This paper presents the design modification of an automatic mouldboard profilograph by substituting an optical sensor and a control system, together with its evaluation. The modified profilograph is an electro-mechanical apparatus in which a micro switch and a DC motor were replaced by an optical sensor and a control system for the revolution of a DC motor. Thereby, the considered surface was measured by using a non – contact sensor. This apparatus has the capability of drawing the profilograms of a 3-D object as a 2-D drawing in the same contour lines. The profilograms drawn by this apparatus can be useful for the mouldboard design and its surface modelling. They compared the drawn profilograms before and after modification. In order to verify the apparatus performance, horizontal and vertical profilograms of a cylindroidal mouldboard were drawn. Comparisons of drawing accuracies were conducted for a metal cylindroidal surface with radius of 315 mm and 540 mm in length, by using the two sensors. Our results have shown that the use of the optical sensor and of the control system has reduced the drawing error of the mouldboard surface curvature up to 70%.