Terminal Iterative Learning Control with Internal Model Control applied to the thermoforming reheat phase

Terminal Iterative Learning Control (TILC) is a cycle-to-cycle control approach that can be used on a thermoforming oven. TILC automatically tunes the heater temperature setpoints so that the temperature at the surface of the plastic sheet tracks a desired temperature profile. Industrial thermoforming ovens can have a large number of temperature sensors (inputs) and heaters (outputs), which makes TILC design difficult. This paper presents the design of a TILC using the Internal Model Control (IMC) approach.