Special Issue; Products for Industrial Machinery - NTN

NTN TECHNICAL REVIEW No742006
Introduction of an Award-Winning Product
2005 Monozukuri Buhin Taisho Grand Prix Machine Component Award
Monodrive Two-Way Feeder
Toshio OGUSU
The Monodrive Two-Way Feeder is a parts feeder
where parts can be moved in two directions (the line
supply side and the other side) by one driving unit.
This reduces the driving unit and controller set from
two pieces to only one piece. Therefore, the feeder
becomes smaller and lighter, with reductions in power
consumption, cost, and maintenance.
1. Introduction
NTN’s Monodrive Two-Way Feeder is a unique
compact vibratory parts feeder optimized for feeding
many part types in smaller lots, and boasting greatly
decreased floor space requirements compared with
conventional bowl-type parts feeders.
As many bulk parts and components are now
manufactured in plants outside Japan, automatic
assembly lines in Japan are increasingly required to
be capable of producing more product types in smaller
lot sizes, thereby demands are growing for less
expensive, more compact parts feeding devices. So
far, the conventional parts feeder systems used for
this purpose have generally consisted of a cylindrical
bowl feeder type that aligns the parts by vibration and
a linear feeder type that feeds the parts to the
assemblers. In this arrangement, the floor space
required for the bowl feeder section is often great.
Therefore, believing that a unique driving unit capable
of the entire process of parts alignment and feeding
would dramatically raise user satisfaction, the author
began his commitment to the development and
commercial release of the Monodrive Two-Way
Feeder product.
The design concept and novel operating principle of
this product have been highly evaluated, and it even
received the 2005 Monozukuri Buhin Taisho Machine
Component Award sponsored by Nikkan Kogyo
Shimbun, Ltd., a leading Japanese industrial paper.
This award was given to outstanding machine
components among those developed or brought to
market in the 2005 business year. In this report, the
author would like to introduce this unique product to
the readers.
2. Overview of the Monodrive Two-Way
Feeder
Photo 1 shows the appearance of the author’s
monodrive two-way feeder.
In Table 1, the features of the author’s monodrive
two-way feeder design are compared with those of
conventional compact vibratory parts feeder systems.
Various compact parts feeder designs that do not
employ bowls have been available (Table 1).
However, these products have drawbacks, including
the need for two driving units and the difficulty of
adjustment of the entire system.
Requiring multiple assemblies, conventional parts
feeder systems that use two linear feeders do not
satisfy the needs for less expensive, compact parts
feeding systems. Therefore, the author tried various
ideas for parts feeding systems in which one linear
feeder unit could feed the parts. As a result of these
attempts, the author has incorporated a vibrationdirection
switching leaf spring unit (Photo 2) into a
conventional linear feeder. Thus, the author has
Product Engineering Department Precision Equipment Division
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