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:
Oct. 04, 1994
Filed:
Mar. 24, 1992
Akira Nakano, Hachioji, JP;
Keiji Ameno, Kunitachi, JP;
Kabushiki Kaisha Toshiba, Kawasaki, JP;
Abstract
A system for preventing abnormal heating of a thermal head, which is configured with pure hardware. In the system, when a temperature of the thermal head becomes an abnormally high temperature exceeding a predetermined temperature and/or an active time of a print-time setting signal cyclically issued from a microcomputer for activating the thermal head only for a time period necessary for printing of one line of picture image becomes abnormally long, a flip-flop is set so that three sorts of switch circuits are respectively operated in such a manner as follows, whereby the abnormal heating of the thermal head can be prevented at a very high reliability. (1) The supply of a drive voltage to the thermal head for heating the thermal head is forcibly stopped. (2) The input of the print-time setting signal to the thermal head is forcibly stopped. (3) A picture image signal supplied from the microcomputer to the thermal head is cut off and, instead of the picture image signal from the microcomputer, a signal indicative of a non-printing picture image, e.g., all-white picture image, is forcibly supplied to the thermal head as the picture image signal.