Control of roll-to-roll manufacturing based on sensorless tension estimation and disturbance compensation

In the roll-to-roll manufacturing process, transmission smoothness of the substrate and positioning accuracy are two factors that may affect the product quality. As a result, when developing roll-to-roll manufacturing systems, crucial issues such as tension control and transmission speed control of the substrate need to be thoroughly investigated. To conduct an in-depth study on the control problems of roll-to-roll manufacturing processes, this paper focuses on the design of tension and transmission speed controllers. Due to the fact that both the friction and external disturbance have a significant influence on system performance, this paper employs the disturbance compensation scheme for the control design to ameliorate both tension and transmission speed control problems in roll-to-roll manufacturing processes. Moreover, the H _∞ control theory is exploited to assist in the design of the disturbance compensator. In particular, for tension control, by taking into account the effect of friction and the dynamic moment of inertia, this paper proposes a modified sensorless tension estimation approach. Finally, a roll-to-roll system is used to verify the effectiveness of the proposed control scheme. Experimental results validate the effectiveness of the proposed control scheme.