High-Performance Feedback Control of Electromagnetic Vibratory Feeder

In this paper, a high-performance feedback controller for an electromagnetic vibratory feeder is proposed. An electromagnetic actuator is driven by a switching circuit with pulsewidth as the control variable. The controller structure consists of a proportional-integral controller combined with a state observer. The controlled variable is the resonant frequency vibration amplitude obtained in real time from the state observer. The use of the state observer allows fast disturbance rejection and reference tracking in both directions (amplitude increase and decrease). Simulations and experimental results from the real device are presented.