Feeding Systems

Consumer electronics, appliances, semiconductors, pharmaceuticals, automotive, and other industries are the key drivers for the growing robotic part feeding system market. The market is forecast to grow $156.06 million from 2021 to 2025 while accelerating the market’s growth momentum at a CAGR of 7.61 percent. This growth is due to the development of industrial robots with self-diagnostic capabilities that help with predictive maintenance.

B2E Automation works with manufacturing enterprises to develop, produce, and market high-performing flexible feeding systems for components that range from 0.1 mm to 150 mm. Oriented towards your business vision, we focus on easy integration with your current systems, resulting in optimized production speed, accuracy, and flexibility. Our highly effective results are obtained through our key competencies and knowledge of all sub-domains of modern part feeding systems – from vibration technology to precision robots to vision-guided robots and feeding bowls.

Our designs are compatible with all parts variants, whether the unit must handle complex geometries or highly delicate parts. We help you gain a competitive advantage and a shorter return on the investment cycle.

Which Automated Parts Feeding System is Right for you?

Whether you are a snack food business that accurately orients and feeds bars into an existing production line or a watch company looking to handle the most delicate of parts, B2E Automation designs solutions according to the opportunities and milestones your company needs to achieve. The appeal of automated part feeding systems has resulted in their universal industrial adoption in the automotive, medical electronics, consumer products, and other industries that require a feeding system on a conveyor system or integration into other processes.

Incorrect part feeding systems or a lack of high-quality systems lead to disrupted production or faulty end products. In contrast, expert automation partners consider and analyze the cost, part size, shape and characteristic, cycle times, number of tasks to be performed, and tolerances required by a process or assembly before suggesting an automated part feeding system solution.

Automated Parts Feeder

Another critical consideration is the anticipated production run length and volume. Legacy hard fixturing makes sense when the product remains the same for a longer period of time. However, with increasing industry competition, changing models and SKUs dictate a modular and automated system.

Types of Automated Parts Feeding Systems

The project scope coupled with an analysis of the strengths and weaknesses for each feeding system type determines the success of each project.

  • Vibratory Feeders

    A standard part feeding system is a vibratory bowl with an inline vibratory track. The self-explanatory vibratory bowl is joined with custom tooling and air jets that are designed around the geometry of the parts in order to sort, orient, and feed those parts into an inline track. Then, the parts are pulled from the inline track and placed into the automated system. The benefits include reduced maintenance and increased modularity and speed in feeding parts, which can feed in as fast as 0.5 seconds.

  • Centrifugal Bowls

    High-speed feeding applications require centrifugal part feeding systems. A cone-shaped disc moves in a circular direction, moving the parts towards the disc’s perimeter. The disc edge, which is higher than the bowl’s running surface, enables the parts to load. The system’s centrifugal force propels the parts past the pneumatic and mechanical tooling into a standard orientation. The parts then reach their final packaging destination.

    The low circulation makes centrifugal systems gentler on the parts, with fewer scuffs or surface imperfections. Moreover, the higher feed rate and a quieter mechanism minimize wear and lower maintenance.

  • Magazine Feeding

    Designed for feeding bars, tubes, and other horizontally oriented materials, automated magazine feeders with advanced engineering systems process up to 1,500 parts per hour, allowing operators to keep up with increasing production demands. There are different magazine feeders, such as cart-loaded magazine feeders, drop-bottom bin-loaded magazine feeders, and gantry bulk-loaded magazine feeders.

    These feeders significantly improve the production environment with increased indirect labor utilization and production uptime.

  • Tray Feeding

    Automatic tray feeders load trays onto conveyors. This increased autonomy in material feeding with an uninterrupted production process is due to the increased ease of loading or unloading trays, which allows you to avoid downtime.

    The speeds of the automatic tray feeders depend on the number of stacked trays and the ability to operate single and multiple trays per cycle.

  • Flexible Feeding Systems

    A significant characteristic of the flexible feeding system is its ability to accommodate product variants. Its popularity has steadily increased over the past two decades due to its cost-effective and more-accurate cameras and, more importantly, the faster changeover that is now possible for different part types in high-mix manufacturing.

Only Settle for the Best

These feeders are not an exhaustive list of B2E Automation’s capabilities. If previous feeding technologies do not match your requirements due to part geometry, applications, or materials, we can evaluate your machine requirements and proceed with prototyping and implementing a customized feeding solution.

Benefit from B2E Automation’s expertise in specifying, testing, and implementing all types of feeders!

Reach out to learn more about how B2E Automation's solutions can help transform your business.

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