Application of Taguchi Method on the Tolerance Design of a Four-Bar Function Generation Mechanism

The purpose of this paper is to use the Taguchi method on the tolerance design of a four-bar function generator in order to obtain the structural error that is insensitive to variations in manufacturing tolerance and joint clearance. The contribution of each control factor to the variations was also examined to further determine if the tolerance of the factor should be tightened to improve the precision of the mechanism. From the study of the four-bar function generator, it was revealed that the control factor B had the most significant effect on the variation of the structural errors. These were closely followed by factors E, C and D. On the whole, experimental errors contributed only 2.69% to the structural errors, much smaller than the contribution by individual factors, indicating that the design of the experiments was appropriate and the results were highly reliable. By tightening the tolerance, it is apparent that the mean of structural errors is reduced by 0.227 and the change in variance is 69.81% of the initial value, i.e. a reduction of 30.19%.