Elscint recently manufactured a vibratory bowl feeder for feeding of two types of toothbrushes. The requirement was to feed the toothbrushes with bristles up. In fact, the bristles were covered with a plastic cap and the bowl feeder was to feed the same along with the plastic cap. Additionally, toothbrushes without caps or only caps were to be rejected and had to be accumulated separately outside the bowl. There were two types of  toothbrushes, one with 190 mm in length and another 202 mm with a curve, making the feeding and high speed difficult. Elscint used its Model 630 which has 4 powerful coils mounted on the periphery of the vibrator drive, thus giving a very stable and powerful performance. A bowl of more than 1100 mm in diameter was fabricated in stainless steel cascade / step design. This helped achieve the required feed rate / speed of 80 parts per minute. Though the toothbrushes were different, versatile tooling inside the bowl ensured that both the toothbrushes could be fed in the same bowl without any changeover.

This shows that a correctly engineered drive can help you achieve the required speed and proper orientation is possible if the bowl is tooled properly. Ahead of the bowl feeder a linear vibrator having 800 mm long track was attached. Thereafter the toothbrushes were made vertically down in a sector type chute. All this at a speed of 80 toothbrushes per minute. The equipment was supplied mounted on a single base plate for ease of integration at the customer’s end. For the other type of toothbrushes, the linear track and the sector type chute had to be changed. The changeover too was made very easy to replace. The toothbrushes which were fed were used for packing in cartons.

You can watch the video of the Elscint toothbrush bowl feeder.