Feeding of Needles from dia 1 mm to upto dia 6 mm at a very high speed requires a special type of bowl as well as a special type of vibrator. Very few companies in the world are capable of manufacturing such a vibratory bowl feeder. This type of bowl feeder is required to ensure that there is also need to make changeover from one size to another very easy and convenient for the operator. Hence, a special changeover tooling set is required which can help the changeover from one size to another fast and convenient. Lengths of Needles that can be fed through this parts feeder can go upto 30 mm. A very high speed can be achieved with this vibratory bowl feeder. Speeds upto 10 Meters per minute (1000 needles per minute for 10 mm length needles) can be achieved very easily. Further, proper outlet tube need to be provided with the changeover tooling for each size. Additionally, a cast aluminium bowl is required and it has to be lined with the proper material which helps the Needles to be fed properly. However, the loading capacity of such a bowl is less, for additional loading capacity, Silo is required. This increases the Bowl capacity tremendously and reduces the frequency of loading of components into the Feeder Bowl. The Silo is also is required to be coated with proper coating like he Elscinthane polyurethane lining to increase its life and improve its performance. For higher speed, a revolving cast aluminium dome is placed on the bowl which rotates in the same direction as the bowl, helping increasing the speed of the feeder. The Silo also needs to rotate along with the dome in order to eliminate jamming / bridging of needles inside the Silo. Further, if the dome is manually removed, the Needles fall into the Bowl Centre and can be collected outside due to the unique “Chute Plate” Design. 

While designing a bowl feeder, deciding upon the track width of the bowl is very important for the proper orientation and speed of the components. If the track is too wide with respect to the component size, then all the components would come up widthwise while in case the track width is too less, most of the components would fall off the track, back into the bowl. Hence, the track width is most important in cases where the orientation is critical and secondly where the speed or feed rate required is high. Further, in case the track width is too large, the bowl (especially in case of step or cascade bowls), would become too big and won’t function properly. While in case of cylindrical bowls, in case of large track width, the loading space for the parts reduces, increasing the jamming of components, which is the hall mark of cylindrical bowls. Hence, a proper balance has to be stuck between the two, depending upon the component size. Quite a lot of small and new bowl feeder manufacturers do not understand the importance of having the correct track width and this does result in a lot of problems in their bowl feeders like wrong orientation or reduced feed rates. Further many small bowl feeder manufacturers have standard bowls with standard track widths which they use for all applications, irrespective of the component dimensions. This reduces their cost and time, but results in the customer suffering with lower feed rates. Hence, it is always better to purchase bowl feeders from established and reputed companies, which have the correct technology and skills to plan and design a bowl having the correct pitch for a particular component. 

Usually, for feeding and orientation of taper rollerscounter rotating motorized gauge rolls,are used. A vibratory bowl feeder feeds the taper rollers in axial direction, without reference to any particular side being forward or behind to a set of motorized gauge rolls. The inclination of the rolls, plus adjustable roll spacing from one end to the other enables parts to move / travel easily and rapidly into the desired position. An important feature is that the rolls being counter-rotating do not bind or grip the parts and are extremely sensitive to fine tolerances. The taper rollers are oriented on the motorized gauge rolls to ensure that the smaller diameter is always leading and are dropped into a pump unit driven again by a geared motor. The pump unit then elevates the rollers to the desired height from where they can be fed by gravity to the work station where they are needed. The advantage of this system is that the feeding equipment can be kept at a distance from the machine where these rollers are being used. An innovation in this is to use a single vibratory bowl feeder having two outlets, to feed to two separate sets of motorized gauge rolls and pump units. This results in not only doubling the output but also getting the rollers in two outlets which can be used to feed to two separate machines. Thus the need of having two separate feeding systems is eliminated. Read more...