Abstract
Currently, most of the plastic products are manufactured by using injection molding machines. The quality of the products depends largely on the injection force. In a typical force control system of an injection molding machine, the information about the force in the machine environment is obtained by a force sensor. However, force sensors have a few disadvantages such as signal noise, high sensor cost and narrow bandwidth. We have proposed the use of a reaction force observer based on the two-inertia resonant model. However, this method has some estimated error caused by a static friction in the holding process and a Coulomb friction in the screw back-pressure process. The estimation accuracy of the reaction force observer depends on parameter variations and the non-linear friction phenomenon. This paper proposes a new injection-force-estimation method based on the proposed high-order reaction force observer (HORFO), which is not influenced significantly by the nonlinear friction phenomenon. The effectiveness of the proposed method is confirmed by experimental results.
