The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Aug. 23, 1983
Filed:
Dec. 21, 1981
William D Thorne, Wake Forest, NC (US);
International Business Machines Corp., Armonk, NY (US);
Abstract
Hammers impact dot front elements on a moving band and drive them into a printing medium. The pitch between two dot font elements is assigned to two adjacent hammers in this invention. An electronic control is used so that adjacent hammers cannot be fired simultaneously. Hammers in a bank are divided into two groups with members of each group alternating on a one for one basis along the hammer bank. Hammers which are fired in a group will all be operating on the same relative dot position in their space in the line of print being formed. With prior dot band hammers, additional spacing is allowed between dots on the band to avoid the problem of nipping and crashing of the anvil elements on the back of the dot band into extended faces of adjacent print hammers. This has created a small gap in which no dots can be created. The present invention also provides a means for automatically selecting large or small dots for printing if the print band has large and small size dot font elements alternated serially on it. It is only necessary to choose firing the hammers of the first group or the second group first in order to select large dots or small dots for printing.