High precision control model of large-sized gantry-type linear motor slider

Abstract Large-sized gantry-type linear motor sliders are widely used in industry (e.g. in liquid crystal panel production equipment). An appropriate control model is important for deriving control methods to improve control performance. Although various control models of large-sized gantry-type linear motor sliders have been developed in previous studies, no results are yet reported regarding control models which precisely reproduce characteristics of a large-sized gantry-type linear motor slider. In general, a method to derive a transfer function by using frequency responses can be employed to obtain an accurate control model, however, large sized gantry-type linear motor sliders have unique characteristics, namely “distortion” and “coupling”, thus the transfer function derived using only the frequency response cannot reproduce the experimental results with high accuracy. In this paper we report on a method to obtain a highly precise control model of a large sized gantry-type linear motor slider.