DC motor actuated closed-loop hole punch unit on printing system's Finisher devices

The worth and performance of a closed-loop control Hole Punch Unit (HPU) for Finisher system of a printer is evaluated. A HPU is a media processing device for punching one or more holes through a media sheet. Existing methods utilize stepper motors with simple algorithm to control it. The disadvantage however is very high power consumption, noisy operation, and marginal performance. In this research, a Brush DC (BDC) motor with encoder feedback signal is utilized to actuate the HPU. In achieving accuracy to locate holes in a moving media, a novel error correction and track staging algorithm is proposed. It is shown in that the proposed design is better than the prior art in terms of performance, reliability, and power.