Synthesis and Analysis of a New Mechanism for Sheep Shearing Machine

A sheep shearing machine is extensively used by the wool industries to cut hair from the sheep body. In this paper, synthesis of a new mechanism for this machine is described. A number of ideas are considered and are compared using a 4-point scale with respect to different critical aspects like cost, weight, wear, etc. to yield a fourbar spatial spherical mechanism. Next, the dimensional synthesis of the selected mechanism is done, and the safe minimum dimensions are obtained by applying the strength criteria against given input torque and speed. After this the proposed mechanism is analyzed kinematically using the vector approach. Further, a Matlab code is written to get the variation of the cutter displacement against the crank rotation. The resulting mechanism shows promise to replace the existing mechanism with several advantages.