Abstract
Part orientation is an important aspect of factory automation. The parts-orienters presented by this paper are flexible to handle a variety of parts, passive (cost effective) and high-speed (i.e., include significant inertial effects). This paper presents a dynamic synthesis approach of gravity fed parts-orienters. In general, previous works were constrained by their quasi-static analyses. This research demonstrates the synthesis for dynamic parts-orienters based on the mechanics of the system using a simulation package as a design tool. The dynamic effects considered by this work include friction, inertial forces, impact with friction and contact/no-contact (changing kinematic constraints). The passive part orientation systems, which are developed by dynamic system synthesis in the presence of friction and impact, succeed in aligning a part into a specified orientation and through experiment are shown to be valid. This paper presents and experimentally validates a synthesis approach for dynamic mechanical systems with changing kinematic constraints. The experimental validation uses high speed video.
