Blades for feeding 3D parts on vibratory tracks

Purpose – Proposes a simple bowl feeder primitive, consisting of one horizontally mounted convex polygonal metal “blade” that can feed a broad class of three‐dimensional polyhedral parts by reorienting and rejecting all but those in a desired orientation. Owing to its simplicity, the proposed primitive allows for the development of methods to automate its design process.Design/methodology/approach – Presents a computational geometric approach to construct the solution space for a given part and then use this space to report all designs that feed the part.Findings – Given a polyhedral part and its center of mass as input, the complete algorithm identifies all single blade solutions that feed the part. The output is either the set of all valid blade designs or a notification that the part cannot be fed using a single blade.Research limitations/implications – Aims to take a first step in the design of complete algorithms for three‐dimensional parts in the context of vibratory bowls. Future research encompass...

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