Victor Company of Japan, Limited

Katsuhiko Terada

Itsuo Takanashi

Toshinori Takahashi

Hiroki Kitamura

Hideshi Tanaka

Tadao Shinya

Yutaka Mizoguchi

Kenichi Miyazaki

Terumi Ohara

Toru Nibe

A thermal printing apparatus for printing input gradational images, characters and figures by using multilevel density which can appropriately regulate the levels of the densities representing the gradational images etc. to be printed by a linear thermal head having n heating resistors arranged in a line, the printing apparatus is provided with a density control unit for regulating, for example, the multilevel durations for energizing the heating resistors in accordance with n gradational printing data each corresponding to respective one of said resistors, and a data conversion unit, receiving a set of n original data for each line as the printing data, for producing p sets of n data for p split lines on the basis of the n original data, where p is an integer being equal to or greater than two, the p sets of n data being sequentially supplied to the density control unit set by set to print each line corresponding to the input gradational image, character and figure printing data as a plurality of split lines corresponding thereto, thereby increasing uniformity of density of print lines of pixels of the input gradational images, characters and figures by overlapping low density portions of dotes of adjacent split lines.

Thermal printing apparatus

A heat-sensitive hot-melt image transfer sheet transfers an ink image to a recording sheet when selectively heated by the heating element of the thermal head of a thermal printer. The image transfer sheet comprises a base coated on a surface thereof with a matrix of circular hot-melt ink dots at a constant pitch. The hot-melt ink dots are selectively meltable with heat applied through the base by the heating elements for transferring an ink image to the recording sheet held against the matrix of hot-melt ink dots.

Heat-sensitive hot-melt image transfer sheet

A thermal printing apparatus prints input gradational images, characters and figures by using multilevel density regulates the levels of the densities representing the gradiational images etc. to be printed by a linear thermal head having n heating resistors arranged in a row. The printing apparatus is provided with a density control unit for regulating, for example, the multilevel durations for energizing the heating resistors in accordance with n gradational printing data each corresponding to a respective one of said resistors, and a data conversion unit, receiving as printing data a set of n original data for each a plurality of lines parallel with the row of n resistors, for producing p sets of n data for p split lines on the basis of the n original data, where p is an integer equal to or greater than two, each of the p split lines being disposed in an area in which the line corresponding to the printing data should be printed, in parallel with the row of n resistors, the p sets of n data being sequentially supplied to the density control unit set by set to print the original line corresponding to the printing data by printing the split lines corresponding to the original line split line by split line so by shifting the linear thermal head in a direction perpendicular to the row of n resistors every time each of the split lines is printed, that each of the n printing data is represented by p dots.

A thermal printer comprises a thermal head and a printing data output circuit outputting printing data. A portion of the printing data is copied. The copied portion of the printing data is added to a head of the printing data to form a combination of the copied portion and the printing data. The data combination is outputted to the thermal head. The thermal head is driven with the copied portion to preheat the thermal head. Then, the thermal head is driven with the printing data to perform actual printing.

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Yokosuka, Japan

Katsuhiko Terada