Tom Oomen
Tom Oomen
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Arizona

The Océ Arizona printer is a large flatbed printer (4m x 2m) for printing large format objects on different media, see Océ's webpage for more information. We use our Arizona in the lab for research and education on learning control, system identification, multivariable control, and robust control. In addition, the Arizona exhibits interesting phenomena including inferential control and position dependent dynamics. On this page, more information on the Arizona is provided.

Arizona in the IEEE Control Systems Magazine

Our Arizona printer is mentioned in the new issue of Control Systems Magazine

BEP projects on the Arizona: Achieving high performance and flexibility

Recently, two B.Sc. students, Koen van Eekelen and Roel Vromans, have been able to draw some interesting conclusions on our recent research:

In particular, in our recent research, we have been developing new methods for advanced feedforward. Our new algorithms combine the flexibility of model-based feedforward with the excellent performance obtained by learning control algorithms. Indeed, traditional model-based feedforward (e.g., mass-feedforward) are very flexible with respect to reference changes, but only achieve reasonable performance. ILC on the other hand is able to achieve almost perfect performance, but is very inflexible to reference changes. This trade-off in traditional methods can be seen as follows:

Want to learn about these learning control and advanced feedforward control methods? See the Teaching page for both the Eindhoven University of Technology M.Sc. course and the The High Tech Institute course on Advanced feedforward control.

Further details on these techniques can be found in, e.g.,

BEP projects on the Arizona

In recent BEP projects, we have aimed to improve our earlier work on at least two aspects. First, the pen mechanism has been redesigned to allow for more colors, etc. A very nice design has been made by Paul van den Hoogenhof:

The design is presently still under construction, and we hope to use it on our experimental setup soon!

Also, the generation of trajectories has been studies by Joey Reinders. Joey made significant progress to generate optimal 2D reference trajectories:

BEP projects on the Arizona

The Arizona is a UV-printer. Unfortunately, this means that we are not allowed to use it for printing in our lab for safety reasons. With a team of highly skilled BEP students, we have started the design of a writing mechanism. The eventual goal is to be able to visually demonstrate printing quality. Interestingly, writing means that all axes of the printer are actuated simultaneously, instead of normal printing where the gantry does not move during printing.

The initial design and construction of the printing mechanism is done by Roy Jacobs, and the reference generators are made by Joey Reinders (and supervision by Joost Bolder, Jurgen van Zundert, Lennart Blanken, and Tom Oomen). The present results are shown in the following youtube movie:

Interestingly, the initial design of the writing mechanism was 3D-printed by Roy using his 3D printer.

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In future projects, the mechanism and control will be further enhanced. In addition, creative ideas are encouraged, feel free to contact us if you have interesting ideas for a (BEP or other) project.

Official transfer of Arizona flatbed printer to the CST group (October 2014)

On October 2, 2014, we celebrated the official transfer of the Arizona flatbed printer with Tim Klaassen, Martijn van Hoorn, and Sjirk Koekebakker from Océ Technologies.

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See here for more pictures!

Reports on the Arizona drawing project

  • Visualizing Performance of Iterative Learning Control with Basis Functions on an Industrial Flatbed Printer
    Koen van Eekelen
    B.Sc. thesis, CST 2016.061, Eindhoven University of Technology, 2016

  • Visualizing Performance of Lifted Iterative Learning Control on an Industrial Flatbed Printer
    R.J.P.M. Vromans
    B.Sc. thesis, CST 2016.058, Eindhoven University of Technology, 2016

  • Motion planning of the Arizona flatbed printer
    R.P. de Fretes
    B.Sc. thesis, Eindhoven University of Technology, 2016

  • Design of a pen holding mechanism for the Arizona flatbed printer
    P.M. van den Hoogenhof
    B.Sc. thesis, Eindhoven University of Technology, 2016

  • Design of a universal pen holding mechanism with linear actuation for the Arizona flatbed printer
    R.H.E.M. Jacobs
    B.Sc. thesis, CST 2015.070, Eindhoven University of Technology, 2015

  • Hand writing control, with application to the Arizona flatbed printer
    J.M.F. Reinders
    B.Sc. thesis, CST 2015.075, Eindhoven University of Technology, 2015

Related research

For related research publications, see

  • Flexibility and Robustness in Iterative Learning Control: With Applications to Industrial Printers
    Joost Bolder
    Ph.D. Thesis, defense date September 2, 2015, supported by Océ

  • Aspects in Inferential Iterative Learning Control: a 2D Systems Analysis
    Joost Bolder, Tom Oomen, and Maarten Steinbuch
    In Proceedings of the 52nd IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, Los Angeles, California, United States, 2014

Arizona team

The Arizona is being used to profile various advanced motion control algorithms and is in the lab of the Control Systems Technology group. To enhance demonstration purposes, various plotting options are being developed, which are outlined below.

At the moment, the following team of people are working on the Arizona

  • Lennart Blanken

  • Tom Oomen

  • Robin de Rozario

  • Jeroen Willems

  • Jurgen van Zundert

Earlier, the following people have contributed to the Arizona project

  • Joost Bolder

  • Koen van Eekelen

  • Ramón de Fretes

  • Roy Jacobs

  • Marc Janssens

  • Paul van den Hoogenhof

  • Stephan Kleinendorst

  • Joey Reinders

  • Roel Vromans

Also, we greatly acknowledge the support by

  • Dedlef Bartels (Océ)

  • Sjirk Koekebakker (Océ)

  • Maarten Steinbuch (CST