Many engineers mistakenly believe that vibratory bowl feeders can only be designed to feed one specific part, but that’s not quite right. A bowl feeder can’t be made to feed, say, a small spring and a large bottle cap. However, with the right tooling, bowl feeders can be designed to feed a family of parts.
This was the challenge presented recently to Elscint Automation, a manufacturer of vibratory bowl feeders in Pune, India. The company designed a bowl feeder to handle three cylindrical forged parts with diameters of 34, 36 and 40 millimeters. Two of the parts are 35 millimeters tall, and one is 39 millimeters tall. One end of each part has a collar.