A study on the design and commercialization of decoupled vibratory feeding system

This paper describes the development of a decoupled vibratory feeding system (DVFS), while the design and commercialization issues are stressed. In DVFS, the vibration angle and the frequency and the waveform of the driving signals as well as the phase angle between the vertical vibration and horizontal vibration all can be easily adjusted, in software way, to suit agile manufacturing. The computer system and sensors form up a closed-loop digital control system and various control strategies can be easily applied to the feeding system to guarantee optimal feeding performance. This flexible vibratory feeding system is highly automatic and intelligent. It can find out the best frequency for the driving signals and can eliminate parts jamming all by itself. Three DVFS prototypes have been successfully developed, on which experimental investigation is carried out with promising results acquired. Furthermore, the related commercialization issues are also discussed in this paper.