Model-based design of the temperature controller of a shrink tunnel

Shrink tunnels are machines composed of an industrial oven and a conveyor belt; they are widely used in manufacturing applications for polymeric packaging. Manufacturing products are wrapped in a thin plastic film and inserted into the oven via the conveyor belt. The heat shrinks the plastic around the products, creating the pack. This paper presents a model-based temperature control architecture that tackles numerous goals: setpoint tracking in the presence of manual-automatic transitions, demanding disturbance rejection requirements, energy saving, and actuator limitations. The performances of the control architecture are experimentally validated on a workbench, highlighting its effectiveness in satisfying the specifications.