This paper describes the development of a mechanism for a hand-held haptic display based on the force perception method, which exploits the perception of the difference between rapid and slow acceleration. Our prior force display was designed to generate asymmetric acceleration using a crankslider mechanism with a rotational actuator. Here, to generate asymmetric acceleration, we propose a new mechanism that adopts a spring and cam with a linear actuator. The spring-cam mechanism can generate acceleration profi les of any shape and is suitable for miniaturization. We discuss the characteristics of a prototype of the spring-cam mechanism.