Crooked; bent or bending.
noun.
A comb.
noun.
A ridge, hedge, or long earthen mound.
noun.
In machinery, a device for converting a regular rotary motion into an irregular, fast and slow, intermittent rotary or reciprocating motion. It properly includes the cam-wheel, plain or geared, the cam-shaft, the heart-wheel, the wiper, the wiper-wheel, and the eccentric. The simplest form is that of a heart-shaped, lobe-shaped, or otherwise eccentric wheel, which imparts motion to another wheel either by means of gearing or by rolling contact. Instead of following the irregular face of the cam-wheel, the friction-wheel may travel in a curved race or guiding path on the side of a cam-disk, as in the cam-wheel of a harvester. In another form of cam the face of the wheel is cut into gears or into projecting teeth that may engage another gear, or an arm or a pinion upon a shaft, to give a quickly changing rising and falling motion. Such cams are also called wiper-wheels, and are used to operate stamps and tilt-hammers. The heart-wheel accomplishes the same object, but In a less abrupt manner, while eccentric cams of various shapes may impart a slow thrust and quick return, as in many machine-tools. The wiper, a cam-shaped arm, is very generally used to operate the valves of beam-engines. The cam in some of its forms appears in a great variety of machines, wherever an irregular speed or motion or a rapid reciprocating motion is required, as in the harvester, printing-press, sewing-machine, etc. A cam-shaft is a shaft having tumblers or wipers. The heart-wheel is a heart-shaped cam. (See eccentric.) Cams for determining motion for cutting and tracing, as in certain machines, are called shaper-plates.