Pitney Bowes Inc.

Monarch Marking Systems, Inc.

Avery Dennison Corporation

Robert B Schulte

Mitchell G Stern

Bruce E Taylor

Lorraine T Porter

William B Durst

Power control systems and methods are provided to control when and how power is removed from devices. A power control system includes a sensing module that detects an output voltage level of a battery pack. A shutoff module initiates a shutoff routine when the output voltage level decreases to a device shutoff voltage level. The device shutoff voltage level is greater than the battery pack shutoff voltage level. A bypass module prevents the initiation of the shutoff routine when the device performs one or more operations that are known to cause high battery current spikes that will resultant in significant voltage drops from the battery pack.

Power control circuits

There is disclosed an improved thermal printer with a rigid frame made from a main frame plate with compound bends and a base plate, record member supply roll mounting and guide devices, an ink ribbon and record member web feed control system, a print head assembly, and improved ink ribbon cores and spindles.

Printer

A dynamic strobe compensation control for a battery powered barcode printer varies the strobe time for the thermal printhead of the printer during the printing of a line of data to compensate for internal resistance losses in the thermal printhead. The control varies the strobe time based upon the measured voltage of the battery powering the printhead when the battery is not loaded by the thermal printhead and when the battery is load by the thermal printhead. The print quality is thus maintained across the width of a line of print data as well as over multiple lines of print data.

Dynamic strobe compensation control for a barcode printer

The thermal printing apparatus includes a base supported registration wall. The registration wall has claps mounted thereto for supporting a thermal ribbon cassette. Also, mounted to the registration wall is a thermal print head which extends over the deck of the thermal print apparatus to define a print station. A platen roller support assembly is mounted in the base for supporting the platen roller parallel to the thermal print head and causing the platen roller to bias an envelope against the thermal print head and causing the envelope and thermal transfer ribbon to simultaneously traverse the thermal print head during a print cycle of the thermal printing apparatus under the influence of a drive motor. An encoder is mounted to the registration wall to interact with the thermal transfer ribbon for position encoding displacement of the thermal ribbon of the thermal ribbon cassette relative to the thermal print head. The output of the encoder is proportional to the rate of change of the position encoded displacement. A microcontroller system is provided for causing the drive motor to drive the platen roller as a select speed and for comparing the output of the encoder means to a desired print speed. If a difference is detected, the microcontroller incrementally increases the drive motor speed until the difference is within a desired minimum range.

Thermal ribbon encoder assembly for a thermal printing postage meter

An improved thermal printing postage meter includes a base supporting a registration wall and a deck. A thermal print head is fixably mounted to the registration wall above a portion of the deck to define a print station. A thermal ribbon cassette is detachably mounted to the registration wall, the thermal ribbon cassette having a thermal transfer ribbon supply mounted around a supply roller and threaded past the print head in the printing station to a take-up roller. A platen roller assembly supports a platen roller for positioning the platen roller to assume a second position biasing the media against the thermal ribbon and the thermal print head. A first motor drive is provided for rotatively driving the platen roller, wherein rotation of the platen roller simultaneously drives the media and thermal ribbon past the print head. A second motor drive is provided for driving the take-up roller during a print cycle. A microcontroller communicates with the first drive motor and the second drive motor for driving the first and second motor drives at complementary speeds such that the take-up side web tension of the thermal ribbon within the thermal cassette remains constant.

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Springboro, OH, United States of America

Robert B Schulte