COMPUTER AIDED ANALYSIS OF A SHEEP SHEARING MACHINE

A sheep-shearing machine is extensively used by the wool industry to cut hair from the sheep body. It is mainly consisting of a spatial four-bar mechanism driven by an electric motor. Rotational input is provided to the crankshaft of the machine by a flexible coupling connected to an electric motor to obtain output-rocking motion of the fork and cutter relative to the comb. In this paper, a CAD model of the sheepshearing machine is developed using the commercial software called ADAMS (Automatic Dynamic Analysis of Mechanical Systems). The model is used to study various kinematic and dynamic parameters, e.g., angle of fork oscillations, torque required at the crankshaft, etc. The latter information is useful to estimate the power consumption of the machine. The ADAMS results were verified using separately derived analytical expressions that are programmed in MATLAB.