Hart's inversors

Hart's inversors are two planar mechanisms that provide a perfect straight line motion using only rotary joints.

The addition of fixed points and a driving arm make it a 6-bar linkage.

[1][3] Hart's first inversor is demonstrated as a six-bar linkage with only a single point that travels in a straight line.

This can be modified into an eight-bar linkage with a bar that travels in a rectilinear fashion, by taking the ground and input (shown as cyan in the animation), and appending it onto the original output.

A further generalization by James Joseph Sylvester and Alfred Kempe extends this such that the bars can instead be pairs of plates with similar dimensions.

Animation of Hart's antiparallelogram, or first inversor.
Link dimensions:
Crank and fixed: a
Rocker: b (anchored at midpoint)
Coupler: c (joint at midpoint)
Animation to derive a Quadruplanar inversor from Hart's first inversor.
Animation of Hart's A-frame, or second inversor.
Link dimensions: [ Note 1 ]
Double rocker: 3 a + a (distance between anchors: 2 b )
Coupler: b
Tip of the A: 2 a