Systematic MBD Approach in Development of Photoconductor Drive Unit

Abstract

This article describes the systematic model based development (MBD) approach practiced in the new development of the photoconductor drum drive unit. In the development of the industry's first drive system using a planetary gear, MBD and quality engineering are utilized in upstream process of the design with the objective of effectively ensuring robustness and durability. In the planetary gear design, the influence of molded plastic gear eeror and assembly error have been confirmed. A planetaly gear unit that suppresses rotational fluctuations has designed based on a robust guideline. In the life prediction, a field-proven drive unit is adopted as a benchmark. A degradation test is conducted in market environmental and operating conditions and SN ratio (signal-noise ratio) of the drive units are caluculated by characteristic of startup motor current. A life is predicted from the defference of the SN ratio between the benchmark and the planetary gear. In the servo controller, A design for periodic disturbance reduction is needed. Feedback and feedforward controllers are used to achieve higher performance.