Feeding Springs, Triggers and Ball Bearings

Feeding springs, triggers and ball bearings a world renowned hair trimmer manufacturer continues to maintain production volumes by automating assembly and sub-assembly manufacturing applications.
Action Feed Systems has been allowed to perform an integral role in this forward progress by providing custom-designed vibratory feeding equipment, so crucial in any high speed automated assembly. Ball Bearings - theoretically a ball bearing would seem to pose few problems as an automated feed. The key is to break up any 'gridlock' caused by the natural tendency of the bearings to form a symmetrical matrix, interlocked across the width of the interior of the bowl. Of course, the bearings needed little vibration to roll to the discharge tube for feed to an interface where they are carried to an escapement through a polypropylene tube extension.	Ball Bearings
Plastic Trigger	Plastic Trigger - the 'trigger', which is actually the power knob on a finished hair trimmer, proved to be a little more of a challenged than the ball bearing. Plastic components typically maintain better tolerances in comparison to some metal piece parts, especially stampings. And the trigger was basically clean with the exception of a thin flange running parallel to feed direction. At times this edge had flash and some slightly malformed contours (not an issue as to switch function). Initially the oriented parts were fed and confined or covered over the top of this flange, that caused parts to bind in the linear feeder. As debug progressed, it became apparent that the best confinement point would be over the top of the part, which has a radius designed to be smooth to the human touch, and proved to be an excellent place to keep control of the trigger through the vibratory feeder bowl discharge, the inline and out to the dead-nest.
Copper Spring - of the three components, the spring proved to be quite challenging and by far the most involved on this system. The spring is actually a copper strip formed into an elongated triangle. Two styles of parts were successfully fed, one with the ends closed and one with the ends slightly opened, somewhat in the shape of a horseshoe. The geometry of this part, especially the horseshoe shaped spring, made for easy engagement of doubles, triples, quadruples and even larger groupings. Groups of springs had to be shed to begin the process of positive selection of properly oriented springs. Realizing the feed rate of 50 parts per minute required dual lanes that were eventually merged into a single discharge to the vibratory inline.   Copper Spring
Worth the effort - after installation at the customer facility it became apparent straight-away that this system would provide more than enough sub-assemblies for the company’s production needs. In two shifts, of approximately 8 hours each, 39,500 assemblies were produced! In the near future these will be integrated into hair trimming equipment destined for points all around the globe. Manufacturers struggling with foreign competition can take heart in automation success stories like this. Rather than move facilities and jobs across the globe, now is the time for companies with viable products to make the investment in automated equipment. In this way, manufacturing operations can be made as efficient as possible, keeping local companies local, from initial design to final assembly.