During my internship with the Arthur G. Russel Company, I was tasked with creating a modular feeder escapement system to help the vibratory feeder department with debugging machines. Once machines are fabricated and assembled, we needed a quick and easy way to test the component feed rate to make sure product assembly down the line would be consistent. In the past, the vibratory group would have to spend several days designing and fabricating escapement solutions which takes away precious debug time. My goal was to create a rapidly adjustable structure with several attachments to fit the escapement needs of any machine. 

The frame utilizes a series of quick-adjust handles to raise and lower various mounting and support structures. This allows a vibratory operator to quickly make adjustments without needing to reach for hand tools. Mounting options are mounted through various sliding features such that the structure can be mounted to any machine. All interfacing faces have acetal slides to minimize friction within the assembly. The frame also has built in parts storage after components have been loaded off the machine. 

After interviewing several of the employees in the vibratory department, I settled on designing a universal frame with 3 different modules that could be easily hot swapped and modified to account for part escapement complexity.

The side shuttle module utilizes an adjustable 2-cylinder piston to intake components across a rail and feed them into a basket below the module. The adjustable piston accommodates for parts of varying sizes using a set screw with a jam nut to vary the stroke length. There are 2 machinable blanks that get machined to match the custom tooling designed for the final machine. They have a consistent hole pattern such that they can be cut to fit different width machines. In the case that parts are coated with a high friction surface, 2 vibration-resistant flexible stay-in-place gooseneck arms can be mounted to quickly add an air bar. Several pre-fabricated air bars with common lane pitch distances can be stocked as well, making setup easy.

The entire module has 5-degrees of freedom for fine adjustment using a series of slots and set screw stops to make fitting the modules to the machines as easy as possible.

The stop & let go module works similarly to the side shuttle module but instead of the parts being carried off to the side, they are released by a vertical gate. They have the same amount of DOFs for adjustment, have machinable blanks to fit different components, and can be stacked in an array for wider machines.

The final module uses a long, rolling brush to feed the parts off slowly, matching the speed of the roller. This module is the easiest to implement with a wide variety of components due to its compliance and doesn't require tooling manufacturing. This was the one module that I was able to fully fabricate and test during my internship. 

This module uses a servo motor attached to a live shaft, coupled by an oldham coupling. The live shaft sits into two slotted pieces of sheet metal and is retained by two, screw mounted bearings. The oldham coupling allows the shaft to be misaligned without affecting the performance from the servo.

The brush was recycled from a damaged brush from an old project. This brush came damaged from the vendor with a large dent in it, making feeding components consistently impossible. Thought to be originally useless, I asked if I could experiment with restoring the brush before we considered spending hundreds of dollars on a new one. After calling the vendor, I found out that the bristles were made out of nylon. Knowing the material, I thought that it might be possible to restore the brush's original shape by boiling the roller since the moisture should release the tension between the polymers from when it was first made (likely during extrusion). 

Using a large sheet metal troft filled with water, a camping stove, and wooden v-blocks to hold the roller in place, I boiled the nylon bristles and agitated them lightly with a brush, eventually removing the large dent in the brush. This process saved us from needing to purchase a replacement and allowed us to finish the project sooner. 

A brush restoration SOP document I wrote now resides in AGR's process documentation toolbox.