Hot roller embossing system equipped with a temperature margin-based controller.

A temperature control system was proposed for hot roller embossing. The roll surface was heated using induction coils and cooled with a circulating chilled water system. The temperature of the roll surface was precisely controlled by a temperature margin-based control algorithm that we developed. Implementation of the control system reduced deviations in the roll surface temperature to less than ±2 °C. The tight temperature control and the ability to rapidly increase and decrease the roll temperature will allow optimum operating parameters to be developed quickly. The temperature margin-based controller could also be used to optimize the time course of electrical power and shorten the cooling time by choosing an appropriate temperature margin, possibly for limited power consumption. The chiller-equipped heating roll with the proposed control algorithm is expected to decrease the time needed to determine the optimal embossing process.