Energy buffered carriage reversal for wide format printing systems
In this paper, an innovative design of a carriage drive for wide format printing systems (WFPS) is proposed. The new drive design reverses the carriage by buffering the kinetic energy of the carriage resulting in a fast reversal and a high energy efficiency for higher productive WFPS. As an energy buffer, a mechanical spring connected to a clutch is used which engages smoothly enabling reversal at arbitrary moments. This way, only a small conventional carriage drive motor is needed to overcome the friction forces acting on the carriage. A prototype has been built and experiments have been conducted showing that the drive motor power can be reduced by at least by a factor of 30 while keeping the reversal time equal. This power reduction should compensate the extra costs needed for the drive-aid. Because the drive-aid can be easily scaled for higher productive WFPS, it has the potential to become an attractive alternative in the future. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
energy buffer wide format printing systems control of mechanical systems