Automated generation of orienting devices for vibratory bowl feeders

Vibratory bowl feeders (VBF) are most frequently used to sort and feed bulk material in automated production systems. To correctly orient the parts for further manipulation, a set of orienting devices has to be selected and sequenced. Today, the design process is expensive and time-consuming, as it is based on a manual trial-and-error approach and requires experienced specialists. Therefore, the goal is to develop a method for the automated, computer-aided generation of orienting devices based on physics simulation. This paper presents the concept of an automated configuration system, starting with a part-specific library of possible traps. For each of these traps, the distribution of orientations after passing the trap is calculated. Based on these distributions, an adapted algorithm solves the configuration task automatically. The paper closes with the discussion of this concept and gives an outlook on future work.