Alps Electric Co., Ltd.

Yuki Oishi

Ikutaro Inoue

Takahito Maruyama

Yoshibumi Abe

Hiroshi Izumi

Hideki Yorozu

Kazutaka Suzuki

Masaki Sakamoto

Yutaka Usui

A heat transfer printer includes a line thermal head having heat generating elements formed in a straight line at one end of a top surface of a substrate and a sealing member for covering and protecting at least a portion of the top surface of the substrate at the other end thereof opposite to the heat generating elements. A film wrinkle removing member is disposed in the vicinity of the heat generating elements of the line thermal head upstream in a direction that an ink film is carried. A voltage is selectively applied to the heat generating elements when the line thermal head abuts a platen with the ink film and a printing sheet sequentially overlapped from the line thermal head disposed therebetween.

Heat transfer printer

The invention provides a current supply control method used for a line thermal head that is capable of reducing the irregular color and jitter easily and surely. The method is characterized in that heating elements served for divided driving are controlled so as to be different for each color served for printing.

Current supply control method for line thermal head

A reading apparatus and a recording apparatus having the reading apparatus which can reduce storage capacity for storing read data and, because the read data processing modes can be switched according to the type of documents to be processed, perform fast and proper document reading operation. If a document to be processed is an image document, the controller operates in the image processing mode in which M pieces of read data are sampled out of N pieces of read data and a mean value of the M pieces of read data is calculated to be stored in the memory as gradation data of one pixel. If the document is a text document, the controller operates in the text processing mode in which read data of one read unit of the image scanner is digitized by a threshold to be stored in the memory. Switching between these two processing modes is performed by the conversion processing operator section in the controller.

Recording apparatus having a text processing mode using a threshold and

Ink ribbon cassette

A thermal printer using a single pulse motor is disclosed. This thermal printer comprises: a single pulse motor; a moving member which is moved in accordance with the drive of the pulse motor; a head raising and lowering mechanism and a sheet feed mechanism which are selectively actuated in correspondence with the movement of the moving member; and a carriage moving mechanism which is interlockingly driven by the pulse motor. These components are driven by the single pulse motor. Also, the moving member may be a rack.

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Fukushima-ken, Japan

Yuki Oishi