Vibratory Feeder System for Plastic Lever

Situation:

As part of an installment with 8 other feeders, we were contracted to construct a vibratory feeding system for a plastic lever for electrical components.  Along with a total of 55” of inline track to move the part away from the feeder, our customer required 46 consistently oriented parts per minute.

Results:

Hoosier Feeder was tasked to feed a part that was complex in both geometry and weight distribution. Early in manufacturing we found one of our biggest challenges was to overcome parts tangling with one another and halting movement in the feeder.  Our first step was choosing a large diameter, 36” bowl to reduce part constriction and coating it with urethane to prevent excess part wear and increase movement.  With a finite amount space for mechanical tooling, our experienced feeder bowl builders methodically placed air jets to assist in breaking-up tangled bunches of parts.  We then separated the untangled part in to (2) lanes to increase the total rate, and manipulated parts using rounded tooling features to carefully flip and turn them to their final orientation.  After combining both lanes of oriented parts, we were left with a constant supply of oriented plastic levers at and exceeding a rate of 46 parts per minute.