Elscint recently manufactured a vibratory bowl feeder for feeding of various types of rocker arm screws in two outlets. In some of the rocker arm screws the head diameter was more than the tail diameter which makes it easy to orient in head up condition. However, in most of the screws, the difference between the two was minimal. In fact, in one case, it was less than 1 mm. This made the orientation difficult as you require very accurate tracks for ensuring that the screws don’t fall down or get jammed. Plus the fact that there were more than 8 difficult types made the changeover very difficult. Ease of operation / changeover was made possible for the operator by making difficult change parts which could be fitted directly to the bowl / linear vibrator. Further all the change parts were laser marked to make the changeover easy for the operator. The requirement was just 15 parts per minute per row and the achieved speed was more than 40 parts per minute per row.

Whenever there are two outlets, it is necessary to provide proper overflow to ensure that there are no parts falling outside the bowl as well to ensure no jamming. This was achieved with the help of a sensor and a air jet to blow the parts in the faster outlet back into the bowl. Once both the linear tracks were full, the bowl feeder was stopped and restarted as required. Elscint Model 400 vibrator with a cast aluminium bowl and LF II linear vibrator was used in this case.

You can watch the video of the equipment.