Characteristics of active and passive dancers: A comparative study

A substantial number of web process lines use dancer mechanisms for attenuating web tension disturbances. Although passive dancer mechanisms are commonly used in web process lines, recently there has been a growing interest in active dancer mechanisms due to their ability to attenuate disturbances over a wide range of frequencies. The focus of the paper is on a comparative study of active and passive dancer mechanisms used in web processing machines for tension disturbance attenuation. Active and passive dancers are compared using simplified analytical models. To substantiate the analysis, results from experiments are shown and discussed.