MSc: Mechanical Engineering/Systems Control - Suppression of periodic disturbance in a repetitive

Canon Production Printing; Venlo; On-site; EUR 6,696 - 10,044; Full time

Job description

Overview

This internship assignment focuses on media transport in high-productivity printing systems, where large and heavy media must be transported with high precision to ensure accurate dot placement and prevent print quality defects.

In many printing applications, a belt-driven system is used to transport the media and position it accurately beneath the printheads. A particularly challenging scenario is continuous printing, where the belt, and therefore the media, moves continuously while ink is laid down.

The belt system consists of multiple rollers around which the belt is wrapped. These rollers vary in radius, have manufacturing tolerances, and may exhibit eccentricity. Together, these factors introduce periodic disturbances in the belt’s motion, disrupting the constant velocity required for precise transport. As a result, achieving micrometre positioning accuracy of the media under the printheads becomes difficult.

Conventional control approaches, combining feedback and feedforward methods, are insufficient because they cannot adequately compensate for high-frequency disturbances. To address this limitation, a more advanced control strategy is required, one that can adapt online and adjust its control input to compensate for repetitive disturbances in the system.