Dancer systems are typical equipment for attenuation of tension disturbances. Lately, demands for high speed roll-to-roll machines are rising but it is prior to attenuate the tension variation on the web entering into the printing zone to achieve the speed increment. Maintaining a constant tension before the first printing cylinder is the key of high speed, high quality printing. Dancer has been researched in two ways, whether it is controlled or not. The first one is active dancer and the other one is passive dancer. In the active dancer, a position of idle roll of dancer is measured and the roll is moved by external hydraulic cylinder to control tension disturbances. While the passive one composed with spring, damper and idle roll has no external actuator to position the idle roll. The tension disturbance causes movement of dancer roll and the displacement of the roll regulates the tension variation. On the other hand a composite type of dancer is applied for rollto- roll printing machines. It has same apparatus as passive dancer. The displacement of roll is measured and front(or rear) driven roller is controlled to position the roll. In this paper, it is presented an analysis of pendulum dancer including position feedback PI control and logic for PI gain tuning in roll-to-roll machines. Pole-zero map and root locus with varying system parameters gives a design method for control of the dancer.
