Fuji Photo Film Company, Limited

Kouichi Hirasawa

Hisashi Enomoto

A method of printing an image on a printing portion of a printing paper using a printer so as to eliminate visible margins. The sheet of printing paper is conveyed within the printer by nipping margins of the sheet. After printing, the printing portion is detached from the printing paper along a cut line. Namely, a print having no margins and no nip markings is formed. Therefore, cutting position controlling mechanisms and paper cutting mechanisms as used in conventional printers are not necessary, and the structure of the printer is thereby made simple. Accordingly, since margins can be eliminated by using a simple structure, photographic printers and the like in particular are made compact and inexpensive.

Printing paper and method for printing

Illumination adjustment of LEDs is carried out prior to printing to a color thermosensitive recording paper with each thermosensitive coloring layer of yellow, magenta, and cyan. A light control circuit lights on the LEDs by one line printing period upon printing to each thermosensitive coloring layer, and makes CCD line sensors use its reflected light to image lateral edge of the color thermosensitive recording paper. Consequently, the output signal from the CCD line sensors is set within the linearity.

Printer

A lateral edge of a color thermosensitive recording paper in the main scan direction is detected. An edge heating element closest to the lateral edge is specified. The distance W between the edge heating element and the lateral edge of the color thermosensitive recording paper is detected. The proportion of the distance W to the width Wt of the heating element is calculated. Recording density of the edge heating element is lowered according to the proportion. The boundary between the edge of the recording paper and the print image is blurred.

Growing community of inventors

Saitama-ken, Japan

Kouichi Hirasawa