Seiko Instruments Inc

Sii P & S Inc.

Shinji Nureki

Kazuhisa Oonishi

Akihiro Iino

Minoru Hoshino

Saburo Imai

Mitsuhiro Kaiya

Shinichi Hayashizaki

Katsuari Sato

Ko Yamazaki

Yasumi Yokoyama

Shigeo Izumi

Kazuhisa Onishi

A thermal printer with enhanced cutting performance includes a thermal head for performing printing on successively supplied recording sheets, and a platen roller for feeding the recording sheets. A cutter for cutting the recording sheets has a fixed blade and a movable blade. A main body unit supports the fixed blade, and a cover unit supports the movable blade and is removable with respect to the main body unit. A pinion gear meshes with a rack constructed integrally with the movable blade to move the movable blade. The main body unit supports the pinion gear, and the cover unit supports only the movable blade and the platen roller.

Printer with movable blade having rack that meshes with pinion when cover is closed

A thermal printer includes a main body frame, a thermal head swingably attached to the main body frame, a platen roller disposed to face a printing surface of the thermal head, and a motor for rotationally driving the platen roller. The thermal printer activates the thermal head while conveying a heat-sensitive paper held between the thermal head and the platen roller to perform printing on the heat-sensitive paper. The feeding amount of the heat-sensitive paper may be set so that an aspect ratio of the characters printed on the heat-sensitive paper is within a range of 0.95:1 to 0.8:1.

Thermal printer

A thermal activation apparatus has a casing which houses a drawing roller that draws a heat-sensitive adhesive sheet through an insertion port and transports the sheet through the casing. A cutter unit cuts the sheet to a predetermined length, a thermal activation unit thermally activates a heat-sensitive adhesive layer of the cut sheet, and a discharge roller discharges the thermally-activated sheet through a discharge port. A CPU controls the cutter unit and the thermal activation unit based on various factors so that the heat-sensitive adhesive layer is thermally activated only when needed.

Thermal activation apparatus for a heat-sensitive adhesive sheet

A paper cutter has a guide for guiding continuous paper in a lengthwise direction from an inlet portion thereof to an outlet portion thereof. A cutting device disposed downstream of the guide outlet portion partially cuts the continuous paper after it passes through the guide and exits the guide outlet portion, the cutting device partially cutting the continuous paper in a widthwise direction thereof to form two separated cut portions joined at one widthwise end to an uncut portion. At least two projections protrude inwardly of the guide and contact opposite surface of the continuous paper as it passes through the guide. The projections are located in the widthwise direction of the guide so as to concentrate a tensile force applied in the lengthwise direction to the uncut portion of the partially cut continuous paper at the region where the two separate cut portions join the uncut portion to thereby facilitate tearing of the uncut portion of the partially cut continuous paper.

Paper cutter and thermal printer

A line printer is provided in which disturbances during the start of printing are prevented with low power consumption. The printer has a motor control section which performs a stop printing operation by driving a stepping motor in a direction reverse to that in which print paper is fed by a predetermined number of steps and then turns off the stepping motor to stop printing and performs a start printing operation in which the stepping motor is driven in a forward direction by the same predetermined number of steps before starting a printing operation.

Line printer

Dynamic division drive of a thermal printer is simplified to reduce the number of signal lines, and history control drive is made efficient to shorten time necessary for data transfer. The thermal size printer comprises a plurality of heating arrays for printing split up into blocks and arranged in a line, a plurality of driver units for driving a block of the heating arrays separately from other blocks, and a logic circuit for controlling the driver units. The logic circuit comprises a block specifying means for specifying one driver unit or two or more driver units to be operated according to block selection data BDAT inputted from the external. Only the specified driver units are all at once operated according to a single strobe signal DST inputted from the external. Further, the logic circuit comprises a data operation means for internally originating history data based on print data HDAT inputted from the external. Further, the logic circuit comprises a transfer control means for transferring the history data and the print data HDAT efficiently to each of the driver units to carry out history control drive of each of the heating arrays.

The present invention is directed to realize a portable, compact, light, thin, inexpensive and fast printer apparatus. A motor is provided between a printing head unit and a stationary frame member to drive the printing head unit relative to the stationary frame member in leftward and rightward directions, thereby eliminating conventional indirect driving components such as a stepping motor and a lead screw. Further, a sensor is provided in the printing head unit to detect a moving velocity and a position of the printing head unit to thereby construct the printer apparatus having reduced number of components to ensure stable driving and high accuracy. According to such a construction, the motor is integrated into the printing head unit, which self-moves in the printer apparatus to eliminate a mechanism converting a rotational movement into a linear movement, thereby achieving cost down of the printing apparatus.

Printer apparatus having a vibrator motor

A line thermal printer has a line thermal head comprised of a plurality of physical blocks arranged in a line. Each physical block has a plurality of heat generation elements to which power is selectively supplied for dot printing a line. A driving circuit has driving blocks corresponding to the physical blocks and selectively supplies power to the heat generation elements line-by-line in line sequence in accordance with the printing dot data. Printing dot data memory blocks are connected to corresponding ones of the driving blocks and supply the printing dot data to the driving circuit in synchronism in line sequence timing. A printing dot counter has counter blocks connected to corresponding ones of the printing dot data memory blocks and counts the printing dot number on the basis of the printing dot data held in the memory blocks for each line of print. A control circuit is connected between the printing dot counter and the driving circuit and forms logic blocks by combining a plurality of physical blocks on the basis of the printing dot number counted by each counter block within a range which does not exceed a predetermined maximum allowable number of heat generation elements which can be supplied with power.

Line thermal printer having power supply capacity matched to number of

This invention is directed to provide a line thermal printer which controls a power supply quantity to a thermal head by high speed control below a second unit and can insure always a predetermined printing density. The line thermal printer includes circuit elements for multiplying a heat accumulation counter for counting cumulatively the number of dot data for each line by a heat radiation constant in a predetermined cycle and for controlling a power supply pulse width on the basis of the count value of the heat accumulation counter.

Line thermal printer having driving pulses of variable pulse width

In an outputting apparatus for characters and graphics such as a printer, in which data stored in an input buffer is being fetched one after another for analysis and output for printing, the present invention provides the installation of a new data string storage, and a data processing unit for storing a data string designated by a specific controlling code to the data string storage after fetching them from the input buffer and for reading out a data string designated by a specific controlling code from the data string storage. The present invention makes it possible to output for printing a data string stored in the data string storage only by inputting a specific controlling code, so that it improves the efficiency of data transfer.

Growing community of inventors

Chiba, Japan

Shinji Nureki