International Business Machines Corporation

John R O'Toole

Ho Chong Lee

Jack Louis Zable

William D Clark

Alex T Shalkey

An impact printing device for printing bar code patterns on an information carrier, the patterns including a combination of parallel thin and wide bars separated by spaces wherein the wide bars can have an imprint width which is a multiple of the thin bars, comprising a movable type carrier, a plurality of bar code type elements on said type carrier, the bar code type elements including first type elements having a pair of imprint forming parallel thin bars and second type elements having a single imprint forming thick bar, and a plurality of print hammers each defining a print position of a print line and each operable selectively to successively impact combinations of the first and second type elements at the same print position to form completed bar code imprints at the print position having a wide bar imprint with a width greater than the single thick bars of the second type elements.

Printer for bar code using thin and thick bar code fonts

High speed impact line printers comprise a continuously moving type carrier, such as an endless belt or band having engraved type characters movable at constant speed parallel to a row of print hammers. A print medium such as a continuous paper web and an ink ribbon are located between the hammers and the type carrier. The hammers are uniformly spaced parallel with the type carrier to define a print line. The spacing of the hammers corresponds to the desired spacing of the printed characters when printed and generally has one print hammer for each print position. An interposer member located between the print hammers and the print paper web enables certain characters such as vertical or horizontal bars of bar code type can be printed in the region of the clearance gaps between hammers. The interposer member can be either a thin, flexible strip or sheet of elastomeric material such as polyimide which spans a plurality of the hammers or a comblike metal member having individual flexure finger elements aligned with the print hammers. The finger elements are mutually separated by a gap which can be much narrower than the clearance gaps between the hammers.

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Endwell, NY, United States of America

John R O'Toole