Speed Control of an Inertia Load Connected to a Motor Through a Compliant Mechanical Transmission System Available to Purchase

In this paper, we focus on the problem of controlling the load speed of a mechanical transmission system consisting of a belt-pulley and a gear-pair. We consider two inertias (motor and load) system connected by a compliant transmission. Because of the transmission dynamics, regulation of motor shaft speed may not translate to regulation of load speed. Further, determination of whether to use of motor speed or load speed feedback or a combination of both that would facilitate control of load speed is of importance. In this paper we investigate both the motor and load speed feedback options by considering transmission compliance and utilizing the singular perturbation method. We propose a two degree of freedom control system that utilizes both motor and load speed feedback and an adaptive feedforward scheme to reject torque disturbances on the load. Experiments conducted on a typical industrial transmission system that is commonly employed in roll-to-roll manufacturing are discussed,. A representation sample of the experimental results are presented and discussed.