Ge Medical Systems Information Technologies Gmbh

Russell R Roeber

James M Gray

A method and an apparatus for limiting the peak power consumed by a thermal recorder connected to portable battery-powered equipment. The battery-powered equipment is designed with a filter and an electronic circuit breaker. A circuit breaker current sense resistor and an output capacitor form an RC filter and provide a large current reservoir for the thermal recorder which averages the peak current demands seen at the circuit input. The electronic circuit breaker provides a current limit function and will not allow a current greater than a predetermined amperage level to be drawn. The thermal recorder has a CPU which provides pulses to a thermal print head in dependence on data incorporated in a pulse-width limit table. The values in the pulse-width limit table can be substituted for calculated pulse widths that would produce peak currents large enough to trip the circuit breaker.

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Cedarburg, WI, United States of America

Russell R Roeber