• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Process Engineers
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.8-18
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• 2010

A total stroke of an opening or closing motion of a hinge mechanism for a folder-type mobile phone is composed of two portions. In the first portion, human fingers act a torque to open or close the folder. In this portion, the rotating folder compresses the coil spring installed in the hinge mechanism. In the last portion, this compressed coil spring generates a torque to rotate the folder. In this study, we have developed an algorithm to design a hinge mechanism to be operated by an arbitrary continuous torque in the first portion of the total stroke. Consequently, we can design hinge mechanisms that satisfy various demands of consumers. A pair of contours installed in the mechanism plays an important role. It transforms the folder's rotational motion into translation to compress the coil spring in the first portion; on the other hand, it transforms translational motion into the folder's rotation in the last portion. Using this algorithm we have designed the pair of the contour curves operated by an arbitrary continuous torque.