Microparts Feeding by a Saw-Tooth Surface

This paper examines the novel use of a saw-tooth surface with a simple planar and symmetric vibration for a unidirectional microparts feeding. In the microparts feeding, to drive the microparts in one direction, the driving force applied to each micropart must vary according to the direction of motion of the micropart. In the case of a saw-tooth surface, either the point or the slope of the saw-tooth can make contact with a micropart. The microparts move in one direction by the driving force according to the contact between the microparts and the saw-tooth surface. The feeding experiments show that the unidirectional feeding is achieved by the proposed method. The driving force at each contact and the dynamics of the microparts with adhesion force were formulated for the feeding simulations. Regarding the elevation angle at which the velocity was maximum, there was a good agreement between the simulation with adhesion force and the experimental values