Brother Kogyo Kabushiki-Kaisha

Yoshio Kunieda

Koshiro Yamaguchi

Akira Ito

Takahiro Miwa

Satoshi Furukawa

Toshihide Fujikawa

Toshishige Okamoto

An antenna 33 is located downstream of a tape transferring direction of a tape discharging port 27 through which a printed label tape 28 of a tape cassette 21 mounted to a cassette housing part 8 is discharged. A reflective sensor 35 that detects a sensor marks 65 provided on the back surface of the printed label tape 28 is arranged at the opposite side of the antenna 33 interposing the printed label tape 28. At the upstream of the antenna 33 and the reflective sensor 35 in the tape transferring direction, a cutter unit 30 for cutting the printed label tape 28 discharged through the tape discharging port 27 of the tape cassette 21 at a predetermined interval is arranged.

Tape printer

On the back side surface of a release paper of a double-sided adhesive tape, sensor markseach in a rectangular shape elongated in the tape width direction when viewed from its front are printed beforehand at a predetermined pitch L along the tape transferring direction to be vertical and symmetric with each other with respect to the center line in the tape width direction. Further, on the double-sided adhesive tape, wireless tag circuit elementis provided between adjacent sensor markson the center line in the tape width direction and at a position equal to the distance lfrom each sensor markin the tape discharging direction (a direction shown by an arrow A). An antennaand a reflective sensorare distanced from a cutter unitby a distance lin the tape transfer direction. The cutter unitand a thermal headare distanced from each other by a distance lin the tape transfer direction.

Tape cassette and tape printer

A CPUdisplays a virtual tapeof a length obtained by subtracting a length (l+l) from an antennato a thermal headfrom a data value of an 'IC chip pitch length L' when it determines that a printing object tapeof typeis accommodated in a tape cassette. A 'tape width' is displayed on the right side of the virtual tape. A tape length of the virtual tapeis displayed below it. A &#x201c;tape type&#x201d; is displayed below it. Then, the CPUdisplays a print areaon the virtual tapefrom a data value of the &#x201c;print area&#x201d; while a right side portion thereof serves as a non-print area. It displays the print data inputted into the print areaand waits for the return keyto be pressed.

Tape cassette and tape printing apparatus

The CPUof the tape printer, when the tape printeris turned on, reads the 'model name' and the power supply type of 'drive power supply' corresponding to each &#x201c;model name&#x201d; of the parameter tablefrom the wireless tag circuit elementprovided in the tape cassettevia the R/W module, and next, displays on the LCDa request for selecting the model name and the drive power supply of the tape printer and wait for a selection of the model name and the drive power supply. Then, the CPUreads the print control parameters corresponding to the selected model name and the drive power supply from the wireless tag circuit elementvia the R/W module. If the print control parameter read from the wireless tag circuit elementis not stored in the ROMor the EEPROM, the CPUstores the print control parameter and executes print control based on the print control parameter (Sto S).

Tape printer and tape cassette with IC circuit part

A word processor including a main unit, a connector for connecting the main unit to a large-sized display, and a display controller for controlling the large-sized display. The main unit includes an input device for entering character data representative of characters, a memory for storing the character data, and a small-sized display capable of displaying up to a predetermined number of characters entered through the input device. The large-sized display has a larger display capacity than the small-sized display, and is controlled by the display controller so as to display the characters according to the character data stored in the memory.

Growing community of inventors

Nagoya, Japan

Yoshio Kunieda