Feed or Pull.. best option for you

So I will start this with the biggest cop-out in that there is no exact right answer, reality is using a bar puller is most likely a great option if you have limited space and money, and a feeder is probably the best option if you have the space, money, and make enough products on a run to justify it.. All that being said, lets take a little deep dive into the technology and what the benefits are, the cons will as always deal with themselves.

So lets start with the cheapest and possibly least complicated of the 2, bar pullers. We have a couple of VDI30 pullers, cost around £800.00 each, and work well in our HAAS lathes. Programming them also is relatively easy, it acts like a tool, a bit of GCODE later (G1 to feed to stock etc) making sure you called an M5 to stop the spin spin of the ‘will-f@*k-ye’ chuck, M11 to open the chuck and a little more magic et voila you are pulling bar.

This is obviously over simplifying it, but it really is not hard, you may need to add a counter if you machine does not a have variable counter but once you got your template, you can play with it and make sure you have a working system. You will need a spindle sleeve and if you have thousands of parts to make… happy times for you, but if you are making couple hundred pieces they are fantastic

Bar feeders, are a completely different beast, form factor alone they are going to be as long as most lather are wide, so you will need some space to accommodate this and still have a safe space to work.

Most machines have in-built software to deal with the feeder, and will do all that we did earlier in GCODE earlier, enter the variables that suits you, and load some bar… call the code in your program and away you go.

I could scratch around here for more content, but it will just detract from the point of the blog, so….

In conclusion, it really is a use case/economic/space calculation. If you have won a contract to turn a load of parts, do you due diligence, how long is the contract, what is the profit, do you have the space, if you can warrant the space and money cost of a feeder, then you have your answer, if it is just a convenience issue, and the above vectors are not qualified, then I would say get a puller, they work, really well.