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:
Mar. 28, 2000
Filed:
Jun. 12, 1998
Hironori Harada, Chiryu, JP;
Kazumi Kanda, Nishikasugai-gun, JP;
Brother Kogyo Kabushiki Kaisha, Nagoya, JP;
Abstract
In an inventive method of driving a thermal head including heating resistors corresponding to a line of dots, the heating resistors are grouped into blocks consisting of the same number of heating resistors. After producing main printing data for one line of printing, such blocks where the ratio of the number of heating resistors in which the printing data is inputted to the number of all the heating resistors in each block is smaller than a preset ratio, are detected as target blocks. Then, auxiliary printing data for preheating such heating resistors in each target block to which the main printing data is inputted, is produced. When the total number of the heating resistors in all the blocks to which the main printing data is inputted is larger than a preset number, the auxiliary strobe signal is inputted to the heating resistors to preheat the heating resistors in the target blocks. By this preheating, the shortage of energy due to voltage drop of a power source will be compensated.