Investigation on orientation effects of modified rocker arm for vibratory part feeder in assembly automation

Abstract

Linear part feeder is used in assembly automation to arrange and orient the parts for assembly, loading, packing, etc. For designing the trap, the natural resting orientation or most probable orientation of the component is to be found initially. The natural resting orientation of the component can be identified by using both theoretical and practical methods. After determining the resting orientation, the trap is designed based on the various gating tool's impact on part transition in motion using the principle of the Markov chain model which is simulated using dynamic simulation software, and part motion time is investigated for the proposed model. In this work, the natural resting orientation of an asymmetric part, the rocker arm is identified, and based on this orientation trap is designed for the linear part feeder. From the study, group C has been identified as the most probable orientation with a probability of 0.62 in the stability method, 0.71 in the centroid solid angle method and 0.61 in an experimental drop test. The dynamic simulation of average part motion time for group A, group B and group C is 14.9 seconds, 11.8 seconds and 8.9 seconds respectively.