Part Feeding

Etienne_Samson

Many of our customers can use the robot and our Gripper to do a pick and place or assembly. The problem is not picking the part or doing the task, but just feeding the part to the robot.

What are the techniques that you use? Any good suppliers of vibratory bowls or feeders?

Samuel_Bouchard

@BeachChE could you share some of your experience here?

Does anybody have experience with Flexomation?

@Ryan_Weaver, @Mathew_Garcia, @dhenderson : Have you had a lot of applications with the Asyril feeders? What is the range of parts that you can use them on?

BeachChE

I have 3 Flexomation units, they are easy to use and easy to control. the only issue that I have seen with them is that they require 7 Outputs to control the feeding and flipping commands.

matthewd92

I've used Midwest Feeders in my past life as well as California Vibratory. Midwest ultimately won our business away from California Vibe due to cost and delivery. In our current model we quite a bit of custom feeding using off the shelf components and tend to work more in a human/robot collaboration and try to avoid very costly part feeding systems as they tend to tie the robot to a single application versus being very flexible and able to love around the factory floor from task to task. 

Ryan_Weaver

@Samuel_Bouchard  - Asyril works very well for small parts, they grew up in the Swiss Watch Industry so they really work best with parts of that kind of scale.  Adept also offers flexible feeders and flexible bowls for much larger parts, though we haven't integrated them with UR yet.

dhenderson

@Samuel_Bouchard Sorry for the extremely late response on this.  We have done a bit with Asyril but as Ryan says they are kinda designed for small parts.  I have also worked with the Adept Anyfeeder and it is a very capable product for a larger range of sizes.  With either product you have to dial them in to get the parts separated well.

We don't necessarily go hunting for these types of applications.  When we do get involved on this side of the process it is often because the client has incorrectly identified a parts presentation or separation problem as a robotic pick and place problem, and we happen to have a couple of tools in the toolbox that they might find useful.

Alexandre_Pare

Hi All,

Check this video to see how you can use vision to do part feeding. 

https://robotiq.wistia.com/medias/d835lqgx6a

Asyril

Ryan_Weaver said:

@Samuel_Bouchard  - Asyril works very well for small parts, they grew up in the Swiss Watch Industry so they really work best with parts of that kind of scale.  A yet.

@Ryan_Weaver , @dhenderson  - see my post in the other thread over here: bigger feeder for large & heavy parts featuring complex geometries or sensitive materials coming out in June 2017!