A few bowl feeder manufacturers in Europe have started using Polyamide bowls. These types of bowls have certain advantages like machining ease and repeatability but the disadvantages are the size (small) and type (conical). Step design bowls, which provide a lot of tooling flexibility, convenience and high loading volumes are not possible in case of polyamide bowls. Secondly, these bowls need to be machined on five axis CNC machines, making them costly to manufacture. However, in case the same bowl needs to be manufactured again, it is much easy to pull out the machining program and machine the bowl in the same way. However, some tooling needs to be hand made, which increases the labour content. Another advantage of polyamide bowls is that coating is not required as the bowl is not made of metal; the noise in case of metallic parts is less. Likewise, a disadvantage is that one cannot use oily parts on polyamide bowls as these bowls are smooth and the oily parts tend to slip and feeding is not proper. Hence, does it make sense to go for polyamide bowls? The answer is that only in case the parts are small and flat and many numbers of the same type of bowl are required.

Conical bowl is a bowl which is like a cone with the track welded to the inside of the cone. Conical bowls are required for certain types of components, which tend to overlap or are very flat. In these types of bowls too, as there is no track on top of another, the problem of jamming of components between two tracks does not arise. Conical bowls are most preferable in case of medical applications as they can be made to ensure there is welding crevice or gap anywhere in the bowl. Conical bowl are most suitable for medical applications as firstly they can be welded in such a way that there is no crevice which can hold dust. Secondly, they can be fixed from the sides to result in much better working and to ensure that there is no dust present in the mounting holes for medical applications.

Most bowl feeder manufacturers usually use cylindrical bowls for most applications. The biggest advantage of cylindrical bowls is their low cost of construction, and tooling. Plus they are faster to make. However, the biggest disadvantage is that there are tracks one on top of one another, which results in jamming of parts between two tracks, removing of which requires manual intervention. Another disadvantage is that due to the tooling, especially in case of complicated tooling, the bowls becomes unwieldy and unbalanced. This results in the bowl not working properly on one side, resulting in either air jets required for pushing the parts forward at that particular area or else the minimum number of parts required in the bowl (for pushing the parts forward) increases. The loading quantity or the volume in cylindrical bowls too is much less, resulting in regular replenishment at short intervals. Though most bowl feeder manufacturers try to use cylindrical bowls, it is bound to create a lot of problems / hassles for the customer during long term usage. Hence, it is important to insist on the bowl feeder manufacturer not to use a cylindrical bowl and insist on a step / cascade type one. Some bowl feeder manufacturers call cylindrical bowls, outer pan types by having the orientation done on an outside track which is pitched downward to improve the separation and orientation of the parts. However, these become much more unwieldy and there is trouble with the parts moving properly at all places in the bowl, as indicated earlier. These too must be avoided. The best course of action is to ask the bowl feeder manufacturer to use a step / cascade type of bowl.