ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 3 -- United States Patent no. 12,344,484, issued on July 1, was assigned to Konica Minolta Inc. (Tokyo).
"Component feeder and component feeding method" was invented by Kiyohito Tsujihara (Toyokawa, Japan), Takumi Sakurada (Hachioji, Japan) and Yuki Higuchi (Toyokawa, Japan).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A component feeder includes: a component housing that stores a plurality of components; a plurality of orientation adjusters that adjusts an orientation of the components housed in the component housing; and a first hardware processor that controls driving of the plurality of orientation adjusters based on component information related to the components housed in the com...