Design of the motion control system for Inkjet printers Based on EtherCAT

Abstract

With the innovation and integration of technology, inkjet printing has been successfully applied in the field of microelectronics production. However, it poses a great challenge to the motion control ability of inkjet printer. The traditional inkjet printing adopts semi-closed loop control, which ensures print accuracy by controlling the printing head to move at a uniform speed. This is not applicable in the field of microelectronics production, especially some flexible electronic products. In addition, the traditional inkjet printing is to print line by line or column by column, which is not suitable for some occasions where continuous inkjet oblique lines or curves are required in the field of microelectronics production. Based on the above problems, the design scheme of applying the EtherCAT protocol to the motion control system of inkjet printer is proposed. Nowadays, in the field of microelectronics production, it is generally cooperate with image processing technology to perform closed-loop control of servo motors. In order to reduce the time-consuming image processing, it is necessary to transfer the image recognition work to a high-performance computer outside the servo motor controller. The EtherCAT protocol has a high real-time performance, which ensures that the controller can quickly receive commands from the host computer, which is helpful to improve the working efficiency of the inkjet printer. Drawing the slashes and curves requires controlling the two axes of the inkjet printer synchronously; just right the specific function of the EtherCAT can help multiple controllers achieve time synchronization. Obviously, the ink-jet printer using the motion control system based on the EtherCAT protocol has a great application prospect.