Patent ID: 7520200

Claim:
A bar feeder for feeding a bar to a bar machining apparatus, comprising: a guide rail for guiding a bar to a bar machining apparatus; a bar rack located obliquely above said guide rail and designed to allow a plurality of bars to be placed thereon; and a bar take-out mechanism for taking out the bars one-by-one from said bar rack and loading said taken-out bar into said guide rail, said bar take-out mechanism including a rotation shaft located above said guide rail, a swing member attached to said rotation shaft and designed to extend from said rotation shaft to said bar rack and receive the bar taken out from said bar rack, and an arc-shaped guide surface for guiding the bar taken out from said bar rack, toward said guide rail, wherein said swing member has a receiving face extending radially outward from said rotation shaft, and said receiving face and said guide surface are arranged to create therebetween a space for receiving the bar taken out from said bar rack, wherein said bar take-out mechanism further includes bar push-up device for pushing up one of the bars from said bar rack to supply said pushed bar to said swing member, and a controller, said controller being operable, in a normal mode for loading the bar into said guide rail, so that said swing member is normally rotated downward from an upper position where said swing member is located to extend across and over said guide rail up to said bar rack, to a lower position where said swing member is located on a far side from said bar rack with respect to said guide rail, so as to allow said swing member to receive the bar taken out by said bar take-out mechanism, at any position between said upper and lower positions, then normally rotate downward along the guide surface and then create an open space between said receiving face of said swing member and said guide surface at a position where the receiving face passes beyond said guide rail to cause the received bar to fall into said guide rail and load said fallen bar in said guide rail, and said swing member is then reversely rotate back to a position adjacent to said upper position and kept in a standby state until an operation for loading a next one of the bars.