Concrete Mixer Truck Mixing Drum Cad / Cam Technology Research

Concrete mixer is an important tool to transport high-quality commercial concrete on a large scale which plays an important role in the modern architecture construction. While agitator tank is an important component of concrete mixers, and its design quality influences the quality of commercial concrete directly. As the structures of agitator tank and helical vane are complex, it consumes a large amount of manpower and material resources using traditional design and manufacture method. By researching CAD/CAM .technology of agitator tank, three-dimensional parametric design and NC programming to agitator tank and its helical vane can be implemented, which will improve the design quality and production efficiency greatly.Oblique cone helical surface is mainly used in helical vane, which belongs to three-dimensional surface, and there's strict mathematical model to control its blade profiles. Based on modified log helix, a hypothetical calculated cone is introduced, and mathematic expresses of the helix vane are built on three function sections of mixer vane: front cone, middle column, and back cone.Based on the analysis to the parametric design technology of Solidworks, COM component technology is adopted to develop a parametric design component for agitator tank. Though the surface modeling interface functions applied by Solidworks API, The component automatically draws the parametric 3D surface model of the mixer vane. Using fixed step Simpson law, the mathematical model of effective loading capacity and barycenter of mixing drum is obtained, and the developed software can do calculations to effective loading capacity and barycenter of agitator tank.In allusion to the difficulty that helical vane can not be shaped one shot, using triangle spreading method, according to the mathematical model of vane, the helical vane is outspread and a COM component is developed to realize the outspread of helical vane automatically. Based on the analysis of the general methods and processes of NC, the developed software module can generate the NC code of helical vane. Consequently, computer automation from design to manufacture to concrete mixer vane is achieved.The study finished in the paper can supply effective supports to the design of agitator tank and helical vane, which highly improves the design efficiency. And some production has been applied in the corporation producing concrete mixer.