Design of the Drive Mechanism of a Rotating Feeding Device

Component batching can be a source of time waste in specific industrial applications, such as kitting. Kitting operations are usually performed by hoppers, but other devices can be used to optimize the process. In a previous work, a rotary device has been proved to be more efficient than hoppers; such a device allows the kitting and releasing of the components in a single rotatory movement, while traditional hoppers require at least two movements. In this paper, an improvement of such feeding device is proposed. The movement of the rotary device is driven by a four-bar linkage mechanism which is designed through functional synthesis. Thank to the four-bar linkage mechanism, the alternate motion of the rotary distributor is derived from the constant speed of the motor.