Mechatronic Design ofanEfficient Drive forWide FormatPrinting Systems

Inthis paper, anewdesign ofacarriage drive forwideformat printing systems (WFPS)isproposed. Thenewdrive design reverses thecarriage bybuffering thekinetic energy ofthecarriage resulting inafast re- versal andahighenergyefficiency forhigher produc- tive WFPS.A mechanical spring isusedasanenergy buffer andaclutch isdesigned whichengages smoothly enabling reversal atarbitrary moments.Thisway,only asmallconventional carriage drive motorisneededto overcome thefriction forces acting onthecarriage. A prototype hasbeenbuilt andexperiments havebeencon- ducted showing promising results. Thefirst experiments showthatthepowerofthedrive motorcanbereduced atleast byafactor of30while keeping thereversal time equal. Thispowerreduction should compensate theex- tracosts needed forthedrive-aid. Because this drive-aid canbeeasily scaled forhigher productive WFPS,ithas thepotential tobecomeanattractive alternative inthe future.