Position Control of Ladle Tip and Sloshing Suppression During Tilting Motion in Automatic Pouring Machine

Abstract This paper presents position control of the tip of a ladle, namely, a pouring mouth in a ladle, by means of synchronous control of three-axis, and suppression-control of sloshing in a ladle during tilting motion in an automatic pouring machine. In order to precisely pour the molten metal into a sprue cup of a mold in every pouring, the position of a ladle tip is controlled by the servo-control system to be kept at the fixed coordinate in three-dimensional space during tilting motion for the pouring. In addition to its servo-control, an input shaping control approach is applied to suppress the residual vibration of sloshing inside a ladle when the ladle is tilted backward after every pouring. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is demonstrated through simulations and experiments.