Bellco Feeders developed Dual-Bowl System to deliver 5-Part simultaneous escapement for robotic assembly.
| Industry: | Industrial Automation / Robotic Assembly |
| Part: | 7mm Injection-Molded Pushpin |
| Feed Rate: | 100 PPM — 5 parts every 3 seconds |
| Escapement: | 5-Part Simultaneous Side Shuttle, I/O Block Wired |
| System: | Dual Vibratory Bowl on Common Baseplate (500mm + 650mm) |
| Voltage: | 220V | Controllers: CUH Variable Frequency Digital (PNP) |
| Hoppers: | Two (2) Vibratory Hoppers — 30-Minute Run Time Each |
A machine builder developing a high-speed robotic assembly cell came to Bellco with a requirement most parts feeders aren't built to meet: deliver five precision-oriented pushpins simultaneously — every three seconds — ready for a robot gripper to pick in a single cycle.
Not one at a time. Not in a stream. Five at once, perfectly singulated and consistently oriented, on every cycle without fail.
The part itself raised the engineering bar further. These 7mm injection-molded plastic pushpins occasionally carry flashing — small plastic burrs left over from the molding process. Any feeding system built around perfect sample parts would struggle in production. Bellco needed to engineer for reality.
And with a robot gripper on the receiving end, clearances were non-negotiable. A millimeter off in the wrong place and the entire cell would stop running.
Bellco engineered a dual vibratory bowl system — a 500mm bowl and a 650mm bowl mounted on a single shared baseplate — with one purpose: five oriented parts on the table, every time the robot reaches for them.
The two-bowl architecture was a deliberate engineering choice. Rather than forcing a single oversized bowl to deliver five parallel lanes (which creates geometry and balance challenges), Bellco split the workload intelligently: the 500mm bowl feeds two lanes, the 650mm bowl feeds three. Together they deliver 100 PPM — 5 parts every 3 seconds — with each bowl sized and tuned for its lane count.
Each part orients hanging from the head — a specific presentation the robot gripper requires. Custom tooling inside both bowls achieves this orientation reliably, even with flashed parts in the mix. The tooling was designed to guide consistent parts through efficiently while allowing flashed parts to recirculate rather than jam.
The five-part simultaneous escapement is where Bellco's craftsmanship is most visible. Singulating one part at a time is a solved problem. Singulating five parts simultaneously — all aligned, all held, all released on a single pneumatic cycle — requires precise mechanical tolerancing and an understanding of how injection-molded parts behave under real production conditions.
One challenge Bellco anticipated early: debris. Plastic injection-molded parts carry fine dust and particulate that accumulates in escapement nests over thousands of cycles. Left unaddressed, this buildup cbulk auses misfeeds, jams, and unplanned downtime. Bellco addressed it proactively in the design — not as an afterthought.
The escapement nest was designed with oversized cutouts positioned to let debris fall through freely during normal operation. The system stays clean and consistent without requiring operators to stop the line and clear fouled nests. It's the kind of detail that doesn't show up on a spec sheet but is the difference between a system that runs reliably for years and one that becomes a maintenance headache.
Every clearance in the escapement — between the part, the nest, and the robot gripper path — was verified in SolidWorks before a single component was machined. The customer received the complete 3D model for review and approval before manufacturing began, ensuring there were no surprises on integration day.
The completed system delivers five oriented pushpins on every pick cycle — 100 PPM across the line — with no operator required to manage parts flow. What once required manual loading or operator staging now runs automatically, freeing personnel for higher-value work and removing a variable from the production cell.
The dual-bowl design provides inherent balance and resilience. The debris-tolerant escapement keeps the system running cleanly over thousands of cycles. And the SolidWorks-first process meant integration was smooth from day one. ✓ 100 PPM throughput — 5 parts delivered simultaneously on every robot pick cycle
✅ Operator eliminated — fully automated parts flow from hopper to robot gripper
✅ Debris-tolerant escapement design keeps the system running clean without intervention
✅ SolidWorks-verified robot clearances ensured seamless integration on day one
✅ Dual-bowl redundancy — two independent bowls on one baseplate for balanced, reliable feed
✅ Handles real-world part variability — designed to run reliably with injection-molded flashing present