*Article* **Slow Mode-Based Control Method for Multi-Point Temperature Control System**

**Song Xu 1,2,†,‡, Seiji Hashimoto 1,2,\*,‡, Wei Jiang 2,‡, Yuqi Jiang 1,‡, Katsutoshi Izaki 3, Takeshi Kihara <sup>3</sup> and Ryota Ikeda <sup>3</sup>**


Received: 10 July 2019; Accepted: 12 August 2019; Published: 14 August 2019

**Abstract:** In recent years, thermal processing systems with integrated temperature control have been increasingly needed to achieve high quality and high performance. In this paper, responding to the growing demands for proper transient response and to provide more accurate temperature controls, a novel slow-mode-based control (SMBC) method is proposed for multi-point temperature control systems. In the proposed method, the temperature differences and the transient response of all points can be controlled and improved by making the output of the fast modes follow that of the slow mode. Both simulations and experiments were carried out, and the results were compared to conventional control methods in order to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method.

**Keywords:** slow-mode-based control; multi-input multi-output (MIMO) temperature system; transient response; temperature differences
