When I was first becoming exposed to the concept of vibratory feeders, it wasn’t quite clear to me what they were used for or why they are necessary. I had worked in a warehouse before, and I had been involved in preparing products for shipping, so I knew that the need for product and materials handling within industry is important. However, when I was working in a warehouse, one of my jobs was to load boxes onto a roller conveyor and push them towards the shipping line. The function of the roller conveyor was perfectly obvious; it made the movement of boxes throughout the warehouse easier, and it reduced the opportunities for worker injury from carrying heavy objects.

But vibratory feeders were to me, initially, a mystery. One of the main reasons why they’re necessary is that they allow feeding and other materials handling and transferring processes to become regular. The flow of a product directly from a suspended hopper will not necessarily be regular. This is especially true in the case of the handling of products with non-uniform shapes or products that can cake or get stuck together. Adding vibratory feeders to a materials handling system of conveyance helps to ensure that the speed of conveyance can be regulated and will remain regular.

Vibratory feeders are capable of feeding regularly because vibratory feeder drives can be designed to operate at consistent levels, which allows for products to be fed at consistent rates. Also, because vibratory feeder drives are usually very easy to control, they can be started or halted quickly, which means that they can be stopped quickly in case of a fault in the conveyance line and then started again quickly after the fault is corrected. Because they contribute to the regularity of conveyance lines, vibratory feeders are very valuable.