"Wes" wrote in message
...
The other day I had a Chinese engineer that is currently working at our
design facility
making parts on one of my lines. He wanted to understand just how our
product is
produced.

Well he saw a vibratory bowl feeder that feeds screws in to the cell.

That thing facinated him. He wanted to know how it worked. I know some
of the basics.
There is an electro magnet that vibrates the bowl, there are leaf springs
that are ground
to cause the bowl to resonate with the electro magnet. All that seemed
straight forward.

Then he asked the hard question. Why do the fasteners move up hill?

When I first explained what I knew he was asking if magnets were moving
the parts. I knew
that other than vibrating, the magnetic field wasn't moving them.

So after scratching my head, I explored the art by looking at patents. As
I suspected,
pure mechanical feeders exist. I really worked my google fu because I
kept looking at it
and could not figure out what was happening.

Asking a few other engineers had one with better googlefu than me finding
something. I
read it a few times and wasn't sure I had it and asked my coworker that
got it from the
engineer that found it to give it to the Chinese guy so he could read it.
It spoke of
pendulums and such, I didn't get it.

After a while working on another project I realized what was going on. I
have a bowl with
ramps heading up hill in a spiral. On the bottom there is a plate that an
electro magnet
that is grabbing and releasing every 1/60 or 1/120 of a second. The leaf
springs are
ground to bring the bowl to resonance at the period of the magnet. The
leaf springs are
inclined so that when the bowl is drawn to the magnet, the bowl rotates
counterclockwise
and goes down, falling from under the fasterners. when the magnet is
de-energised the bowl
rises, contacts fasteners and moves them ahead as the bowl rotates
clockwise.

Both the Chinese engineer (doctorial candidate) and this maintenance tech
was pretty darn
happy understanding something yesterday. He seeing it for the first time
and me seeing
them for years but never really understanding the finer points.

Wes
--

I was a skeptic before I became a cynic.

This really has nothing to do with your gizmo, but I worked several of the
"pack" shows in Las Vegas, where manufacturers bring automated equipment of
all manner from automated fortune cookie wrappers to automated dry cleaning
racks. We were riggers, helping bring in the delicate machinery, and
properly set and connect it. Some of it looked otherworldly. Then we got
to see it run. It was all a blur, and then the finished widgets spat out
the end at lightning speed. There were computer shape recognition
technology, rapid counters, stuff like yours that I couldn't understand or
comprehend, just stand in awe and watch it work. It was fascinating as all
get out. You must have some machine to get his attention like that.

Steve

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