There is described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,063,642, dated Dec. 20, 1977, apparatus comprising a machine frame with a conveying device mounted thereon and being in the form of a conveying brush. In front of the conveying brush is a storage area for a disordered quantity of individual parts and following the storage area is a linear conveying device, in the form of a vibratory conveyor for aligning and/or sorting the individual parts. Although such apparatus have proved to be successful in aligning, sorting and separating individual parts, additional devices need to be provided in order to enable rapid changes in the type of the individual parts to be processed by means of the apparatus.
The present invention is intended to avoid this disadvantage.