Seiko Instruments Inc

Other

Masaki Denda

Hideki Onuki

Masashi Shimada

Mineo Ogura

Hideki Ohnuki

Mitsuhiro Kaiya

An ink jet recording apparatus composed of a print head of the on-demand type for ejecting an ink droplet according to print data and a platen having a flat section opposed to the head and extending at least over a region corresponding to a printing span through which the head is displaced to effect printing. The flat section of the platen is formed with a plurality of opening holes each having a relatively small diameter. A vacuum device creates a vacuum beneath the platen to attract a recording medium onto the flat section to enable the recording medium to receive ink droplets ejected from the head so as to print an image. The dimensions or the density of the opening holes is gradually reduced so as to compensate for differences in width of the recording media to thereby effectively avoid floating of a medium.

Ink jet recording apparatus with vacuum platen

A thermal line printer line-sequentially prints dots on a recording medium in horizontal and vertical directions according to bit data. A line thermal head includes a plurality of linear head segments arranged in a pair of parallel rows along the horizontal direction in staggered relation to each other such that the head segments partly overlaps through different relative displacements with each other between the rows. Each of the head segments has a plurality of heating elements disposed linearly along the segment, and effective to print dot according to image bit data and ineffective to print dot according to blank bit data. A feeding device line-sequentially feeds a recording medium relative to the line thermal head in the vertical direction. A designating circuit operates according to the different relative displacements for designating effective and ineffective sections adjacently with each other to the respective head segments such that the designated effective sections are successively connected to each other in the horizontal direction without irregular overlapping and spacing. An assigning circuit operates during each line-sequential printing for assigning image bit data to heating elements within the effective sections and blank bit data to heating elements within the ineffective sections to thereby effect regular dot printing along each line.

Thermal line printer with staggered head segments and overlap

Thermal printing is conducted as follows generally-used small-width thermal heads having an effective width equal to the width of A-4 size paper or B-4 size paper are arranged in rows, each of which has a plurality of thermal heads, over two parallel platens extending at right angles to the direction in which the recording paper is moved, in such a manner that the thermal heads in different rows are alternately in the direction of the width of the recording paper, whereby the heating resistors in the thermal heads in different rows overlap one another with respect to the direction in which the recording paper is moved.

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Tokyo, Japan

Masaki Denda