CAM DESIGN
Cat Cams has a large database of cam designs available, ready for grinding to suit your custom project. However, if you have particular needs, we do offer in-house cam design for the most demanding applications.
To generate the best profiles available, we have developed our own cam design software to tackle any design constraint of modern times. This way, we are able to define the edge of technology rather then try to stay close to it.
Thanks to tight integration into the production process, new designs are efficiently processed to machine code for the CNC cam grinders. This way, custom cams profiles are available within a real world time frame and cost
ROCKER ARM GEOMETRY
In fact, the first result of the design process is the valve motion. The cam profile (or cam lobe) is just the geometrical shape that is required to generate the valve motion. In case of a flat tappet cam follower, the relation is very much straightforward. The usual issues are the contact diameter on the cam follower, and undercutting of the cam nose ('knife edge'), especially on lobes with a small cam base diameter.
In case of a rocker arm system, the calculations to get the correct lobe shape are more complicated, and typically more iterations are needed to optimize the final result. Luckily, the valve train geometry for a vast range of engines has been scrutinized on the coordinate measurement machine (CMM) at Cat Cams , so for most applications all required geometrical data is readily available.