ANALYZING THE NATURAL RESTING ASPECTS OF A COMPONENT BY ITS CENTROID SOLID ANGLE

In electronics manufacture, discrete components are commonly conveyed and oriented in high volume devices such as vibratory bowl feeders, th e efficiencies of which depend, to a large extent, on some fore-knowle dge of the probabilities of the orientation of the components prior to entering the devices. The research discussed in this paper is motivat ed by the fact that a simple and effective analysis of these probabili ties is wanting. A new approach, employing the concept of the centroid solid angle of the component, is presented. The hypothesis postulates that the probability of a component resting on a specific aspect is d irectly proportional to the magnitude of the centroid solid angle and inversely proportional to the height of its centroid from that aspect. When the hypothesis is applied to prismatic parts of square, triangul ar, hexagonal, cylindrical and rectangular cross-sections, the results were found to agree well with those derived by the Energy Barrier Met hod postulated by G. Boothroyd and associates.