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:
Nov. 05, 2002
Filed:
Jul. 21, 2000
Satoshi Nakajima, Horigane-mura, JP;
Satoru Imai, Suwa, JP;
Seiko Epson Corporation, Tokyo, JP;
Abstract
The present invention provides in a line thermal printer for producing different colors in a print medium according to a level of heat energy applied to the print medium: storage buffers B to B having a plurality of areas for storing a line of print pixel data according to the number of plural heating elements for forming print pixels; a control circuit for identifying whether the printer is set to a monochrome mode or a multicolor mode; a CPU for storing to the storage buffers B to B the next line of print pixel data to be printed and one or a plurality of lines of print pixel data printed immediately before (when the printer is set to the monochrome mode), and storing to the storage buffers B to B at least a next line of print pixel data of each color to be printed when the printer is set to the multicolor mode; and a drive data generator for outputting data determining the drive time of each drive circuit of the heating elements based on data stored in the storage buffers. Thus the present invention can provide a line thermal printer capable of switching between monochrome and multicolor printers, and accomplishing high quality monochrome printing with consideration given to a printing history, and also printing in multiple colors.