Hello all,

I'm really, really struggling with this.  I have a pump with 4 check valves.  To animate these check valves as the pump turns, I created a sketch with a cam-like profile that rotates with the pump's shaft.  I then used a path mate to mate centroid of the check plate to the cam-like path.  If I rotate the model by hand, it works great.

When I use motion manager to motorize the shaft, the check valves will snap out of the pump housing and end up floating outside of it while still following the path.  Once this happens, I have to delete the mates and start over because all the mates are still active (concentric, plane for non-rotation, and path)  How can I animate these check valves in a way that prevents this error?  Solidworks warns me about using 'free' path mates for animation, but I don't see a way around using this method.  I know this has to do with the fact that the path mate is not fully-defining the parts since the mates can all technically be satisfied by jumping 180 degrees on my circular sketch, but why do the parts suddenly do this?

-check valve is the small plate that sits just beneath the small springs

-check plate is mated concentric to the bore in the housing

-plate right-plane is mated to a plane at the center of the camshaft lobes (prevents plate rotation)

-sketch at center of cam lobes is path-mated to centroid of check plate

-motor is applied to gear, which is fully mated to the camshaft concentric and using planes.

Thank you very much for any help!

Dylan