GB921291A - Improvements in or relating to vibratory feeders - Google Patents

Abstract

921,291. Jigging conveyers. SYNTRON CO. July 27, 1960 [Aug. 24, 1959], No. 26187/60. Class 78 (1). Apparatus for use in the vibratory feeding of miniature articles, e.g. washers of a thickness of a few thousandths of an inch, consists of a bowl in the form of an annular dish whose surface slopes downwardly towards its centre where it merges with an upwardly extending outwardly open helical track. As shown, the dish's surface 27 is parallel to the conveying surface 26 of the helical track and runs into the latter at its lower end. Suitable vibration of the bowl will thus cause articles on the dish to be conveyed up the track towards its upper end where they would normally be discharged back into the bowl. Just before this upper end is reached, there is set into a groove 37 in the track a discharge shoot 36, and just before this, at 34, an adjustable stop is inserted which restricts the width of the track and is used to control the orientation of the articles. The vibratory feeder shown consists of the bowl above described mounted adjacent a bridge member 40 on to which the shoot 36 discharges, the bridge 40 comprising two relatively adjustable bars 38 and 41 of which the former has a sloping surface whose lower edge lies just below the level upper surface of the latter to define a ridge which is set to about the thickness of an article to be conveyed along the bridge. At 54 the bar 41 is cut away so that, should two articles fed from shoot 36 on to the surface of bar 38 become superimposed, the upper will be automatically rejected at 54. The end of the bridge 40 is connected to a take-away shoot of tubular form (not shown). In use of the apparatus both the bowl and the adjacent bridge member are vibrated, the former directly and the latter indirectly, by a vibrator contained in the base housing 5. This vibrator reciprocates a plurality of obliquely disposed rods coupled to the bowl. The body of the housing, which tends to vibrate in unison with the vibrator, is connected to the bridge member 40 by a leaf spring support 45 and, by suitably adjusting a counterweight 53 carried by the bridge member, the natural frequency of the mass-spring system comprising the bridge member and its spring support is tuned to approximate resonance with the vibrator frequency so that the bridge will be given an appreciable amplitude of vibration whenever the bowl is vibrated.