A gravity feeder is a simple product with one hard requirement: it has to deliver food at a steady rate without jamming, and it has to stop delivering when the bowl is full. Everything else, the handle, the colour, the shape, is packaging around that mechanism.
We mould gravity feeders and inverted-bottle water dispensers in Changzhou for pet specialty chains, e-commerce sellers and OEM brands.
How gravity feed actually works
Kibble rests in a hopper and flows down a chute into the bowl. When the pet eats, the angle of repose of the kibble lets the pile collapse and refill the bowl. The chute throat has to be wider than the largest kibble by a margin, and the chute wall has to be steep enough that friction does not hold the column in place. For a typical 8 to 12 mm kibble, a 38 mm throat with a 55 degree chute wall feeds reliably; a 30 mm throat jams on the first large piece.
Specification
| Food capacity | 3.5 L (about 1.6 kg of kibble) |
|---|---|
| Water capacity | 3.8 L, inverted PET bottle |
| Base material | PP, food contact grade |
| Hopper | PET, clear or tinted, with a screw lid |
| Flow control | Sliding gate, three positions |
| Feet | TPR, non-slip, replaceable |
| MOQ | 500 sets per colourway |
Cleaning and hygiene
Pet bowls are washed less often than they should be, so the design has to make cleaning easy or it will not happen. The base separates from the hopper without tools, the bowl has no internal corners tighter than 5 mm, and the water reservoir has a wide neck so a bottle brush fits. Where a buyer asks for a dishwasher-safe claim, the PP base is moulded to a 110 C tolerance and the PET hopper is excluded from the claim.
Chew resistance
Where a feeder sits on the floor for a large dog, the base rim takes the most abuse. We mould the rim at 3 mm in PP rather than PS, and flag in the DFM note that no thin-wall decorative feature should be placed within reach of a chewing animal. Load testing covers a 25 kg static load on the hopper and a drop test from 1 m onto a hard floor.
OEM options
Capacity, colourway, lid style, handle position and the flow gate can all change within an existing tool family. A new base shape needs 30 to 35 days of tooling. Retail packing options include a printed carton, a shrink-wrapped set, and a bilingual label applied at the line.
Compliance
Food-contact parts are moulded from food contact grade PP and PET with material declarations supplied per lot. Where the destination market requires REACH or FDA compliance documentation, it is provided for our material; any product-level certification is arranged by the buyer through a laboratory of their choice.
