MODEL-BASED DESIGN OF P`APER HANDLING IN PRINTERS

Models have the potential to support and speed up the system development process of high-tech mechatronic systems since they enable extensive functional and performance analysis of the designs and control code generation. The purpose of this paper is to propose a first step towards a framework for effective controller synthesis and code generation for the development of paper handling in printing systems. Although it specifically addresses the issues related to efficient model definitions for the application area, this framework can also be applied for the development of other automatic material handling systems like conveyor systems. A method is proposed to speed up the development of paper path timing. Based on the timing requirements, a constraint-based model is defined. Then a timing solution satisfying the constraints is derived using numerical optimization. This approach is successfully applied to an industrial case study showing the expressiveness of the introduced model.