Automatic bar material feeding apparatus

Claim 1

In an apparatus for automatically feeding into a machine tool bar stock material for machining thereof, the apparatus having: a stock table for holding thereon a number of bars; openable and closeable bearing means; means for supplying the bars, one at a time, from the stock table to the bearing means to be rotatably borne thereby in coaxial alinement with the main spindle of the machine tool, the bearing means extending from one end to the other end thereof over most of the length of the bar thus borne; and a feed pipe with a feed chuck for gripping the end remote from the machine tool of the bar thus borne and successively feeding the bar into the machine tool as the machining progresses, the bearing means comprising a plurality of bearing clamps disposed sequentially at intervals along the borne bar and each comprising a pair of openable and closeable clamping jaws each having an endless belt rotatably supported on rotatable pulleys, the borne bar being elastically clamped between the two belts of the clamping jaws of each bearing clamp, the improvement comprising: a first mechanism provided for each bearing clamp for varying the angular position of the clamp about the borne bar and functioning to cause the directions of the clamping forces of the bearing clamps on the borne bar to be respectively different; and a second mechanism for opening and closing the clamping jaws of each bearing clamp and functioning so that, as the feed chuck advances, the bearing clamps successively approached thereby are successively opened to release the bar, the first and second mechanisms being unitized for each bearing clamp.