Brother Kogyo Kabushiki-Kaisha

Atsuhiro Kobayashi

Mikio Sakuma

Yoshiaki Nagao

Shigenori Hattori

A tape storage cassette contains a thermal transfer ribbon having an ink coating on one surface and a recording tape wound about respective spools. A separator concentric with the recording tape spool wraps partially about the recording tape wound upon the spool to isolate the recording tape from the ink coating on the thermal transfer ribbon and cooperates with a film separator in preventing contact between the transfer ribbon and recording film prior to printing.

Printing tape cassette with separated recording medium and ink ribbon

A tape feed mechanism comprising a storage cassette having at least two tapes, a tape feed device and a guide arrangement. One of the tapes is an inked ribbon having an inked surface that is directed toward the spool about which it is wound.

Tape feed mechanism having ribbon inked surface directed toward ribbon

In a tape alignment mechanism for overlapping two or more tapes with an alignment operation in a width direction, the tape alignment mechanism comprises an alignment member. For example, when a tape is fed through a roller member having a pair of flange portion of which interval of length is designed to be substantially similar to a width of the tape, the tape is aligned in a width direction. Further, an another tape to be overlapped with the tape is fed through the roller member, and thus, the two tapes are acculately overlapped.

Tape alignment mechanism

In a tape feed mechanism comprising a tape storage cassette including at least two tapes in respective wound states and a tape feed device feeding the two tapes in an overlapped state, provided is a guide member for guiding the two tapes to a predetermined portion in the tape storage cassette. Thus, the tape storage cassette is detachably mounted from the tape feed device in a condition that each of the leading end portions of the tapes are fixed at the predetermined position and the tape storage cassette is attachably mounted again to the tape feed device in that condition.

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Nagoya, Japan

Atsuhiro Kobayashi