JP2008194893A - Printing apparatus and printing method - Google Patents

Abstract

<P>PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a printing apparatus capable of making traces of release formed on an ink holding medium surely impossible to read after ink is transferred onto a medium to be transferred from the ink holding medium by an inexpensive and simple constitution, and to provide a printing method. <P>SOLUTION: The printing apparatus 10 partly transfers the ink held on the surface of an ink ribbon 1 via a thermal head 5 onto the surface of the medium M to be transferred to print information, and then, transfers the ink within a used region containing the traces of release formed on the ink ribbon 1 onto an image receiving ribbon 7 by a heat roller 6. The image receiving ribbon 7 is used by being rewound for a plurality of times and the ink within the used region containing the traces of release is transferred in piles. <P>COPYRIGHT: (C)2008,JPO&INPIT

Description

  This invention prints information by bringing an ink holding medium such as an ink ribbon holding ink on the surface into contact with a transfer medium and partially transferring the ink held by the ink holding medium to the transfer medium. The present invention relates to an apparatus and a printing method.

  In general thermal transfer printers, when printing information, the same shape of ink as the characters and images to be printed is thermally transferred from the ink ribbon and peeled off. Traces are formed. Therefore, it is possible to recognize the print contents by observing the wound ink ribbon, and there is a possibility that information may be leaked when personal information is included in the print contents.

  As a method for solving this problem, generally, a method of cutting and discarding a used ink ribbon, or a method of incinerating a used ink ribbon can be considered. At present, information leakage is prevented by such cutting and incineration, but the ink ribbon itself is generally very soft and stretchable. Cannot cut well due to fusion. In addition, incineration processing cannot basically be performed on the user side, and processing is performed by a specialist, so the possibility of information leakage cannot be completely eliminated.

  For this reason, there is a demand for a method of automatically removing the used ink ribbon peeling trace inside the printer and processing the ink ribbon in an environment where it is not touched by others. As such a method, for example, a method has been proposed in which another ink ribbon for erasing is incorporated in an ink ribbon cassette, and the ink ribbon having a peeling mark is overlapped and welded to make the peeling mark invisible. (For example, refer to Patent Document 1).

However, as disclosed in Patent Document 1, in the system in which another ink ribbon is incorporated in the ink ribbon cassette, not only a special mechanism necessary for the processing is required on the printer side, but also an ink ribbon cassette which is a consumable item. The internal structure is also complicated, and a separate ink ribbon that is used only for the purpose of preventing information leakage is also required, which increases costs.
JP 2004-82591 A

  An object of the present invention is to provide a printing apparatus and a printing method capable of reliably making a peeling mark formed on an ink holding medium unreadable after transferring ink from the ink holding medium to a transfer medium with an inexpensive and simple configuration. It is to provide.

  In order to achieve the above object, a printing apparatus according to the present invention includes an ink holding medium holding a transfer ink on a surface thereof, and the ink held on the surface of the ink holding medium being partially peeled and transferred to a transfer medium. In this way, a printing unit that prints information on the transfer medium, and after printing, at least partially removes the ink remaining on the ink holding medium so that the printed content is unreadable from the ink holding medium. And a removal unit.

  In addition, the printing method of the present invention includes a printing process for printing information on a transfer medium by partially peeling the ink held on the surface of the ink holding medium and transferring it to the transfer medium; Removing the ink remaining on the ink holding medium at least partially so that the printed content is unreadable from the ink holding medium.

  According to the above invention, after the ink held by the ink holding medium is transferred to the transfer medium and information is printed, the ink is formed on the ink holding medium by removing at least a part of the ink remaining on the ink holding medium. Ink peeling marks can be made unreadable and information leakage can be prevented.

  Since the printing apparatus according to the present invention has the above-described configuration and operation, after the ink is transferred from the ink holding medium to the medium to be transferred, the peeling formed on the ink holding medium with an inexpensive and simple configuration. The mark can be reliably made unreadable.

Hereinafter, embodiments of the present invention will be described in detail with reference to the drawings.
FIG. 1 shows a schematic diagram of a printing apparatus 10 according to a first embodiment of the present invention.

  The printing apparatus 10 includes an ink ribbon 1 that retains ink on the surface, a feed shaft 2 that winds one end of the ink ribbon 1 with the surface facing outward, and a winding that winds the other end of the ink ribbon 1 A shaft 3, a guide roller 4 disposed in contact with the back side of the ink ribbon 1 between the feed shaft 2 and the take-up shaft 3, and a back side of the ink ribbon 1 between the feed shaft 2 and the guide roller 4. The surface of the ink ribbon 1 opposed to the heat roller 6 with the thermal ribbon 5 and the heat roller 6 disposed on the back side of the ink ribbon 1 between the guide roller 4 and the take-up shaft 3 sandwiched between the ink ribbon 1 and the thermal roller 5 disposed. The image receiving ribbon 7 extended in the same direction as the ink ribbon 1 on the side, two rotating shafts 8a and 8b wound around both ends of the image receiving ribbon 7, and two guides for guiding the image receiving ribbon 7, respectively. With a Dorora 9. The image receiving ribbon 7 may be made of any material, and considering disposal, it is desirable to use a cheap and easy-to-cut paper band such as recycled paper.

  The printing apparatus 10 also includes a control circuit (not shown) for synchronizing and operating a drive mechanism (not shown) of the ink ribbon 1, a drive mechanism (not shown) of the heat roller 6, and a drive mechanism (not shown) of the image receiving ribbon 7. The ink ribbon 1 functions as an ink holding medium of the present invention, the thermal head 5 functions as a printing unit of the present invention, and the heat roller 6 and the image receiving ribbon 7 function as a removing unit of the present invention.

  The transfer medium M is transported at a constant speed in the direction of arrow T in the drawing by a transport mechanism (not shown), and the ink ribbon 1 is wound along the transfer medium M by being wound in the direction of arrow R by the winding shaft 3 at the same speed. Travel in the same direction and at the same speed. In this state, the thermal head 5 is operated to partially transfer the ink on the surface of the ink ribbon 1 onto the surface of the transfer medium M, and information such as characters is printed on the surface of the transfer medium M.

  FIG. 2 shows an example of character information printed on the surface of the transfer medium M. At this time, only the character area heated by the thermal head 5 is melted, peeled off from the base film, and transferred to the transfer medium M. FIG. 3 shows an example of an ink peeling trace formed on the ink ribbon 1 side at this time. That is, by printing the character information as shown in FIG. 2, the ink is peeled in the same pattern as the character information on the ink ribbon 1 side. Therefore, when comparing FIG. 2 and FIG. 3, it can be seen that the ink peeling trace on the ink ribbon 1 side matches the information printed on the surface of the transfer medium M.

  In this way, after printing information on the transfer medium M, the ink ribbon 1 having a peeling trace as shown in FIG. 3 is wound around the winding shaft 3 via the guide roller 4. At this time, the surface of the ink ribbon 1 is heated while being pressed against the image receiving ribbon 7 by the heat roller 6 disposed between the guide roller 4 and the take-up shaft 3, and has, for example, a peeling trace as shown in FIG. All the ink in the used area is transferred to the image receiving ribbon 7. At this time, the image receiving ribbon 7 travels in the same direction as the ink ribbon 1 at the same speed.

  In this state, although there is a possibility that the ink in the unused area other than the used area remains on the base film of the ink ribbon 1, the used area in the state shown in FIG. Since no ink remains, the ink ribbon 1 taken up by the take-up shaft 3 is in a state where there is no information regarding the print contents. For this reason, there is no problem even if the ink ribbon 1 wound up by the winding shaft 3 is treated as normal waste, and there is no fear that the content of printed information leaks.

  However, as it is, the ink in a state where the peeling trace shown in FIG. 3 is reversed is transferred to the image receiving ribbon 7 side to which the ink of the used area having the peeling trace is transferred, Viewing the image receiving ribbon 7 makes it possible to read the contents of the printed information. Therefore, discarding the image receiving ribbon 7 in this state may lead to information leakage.

  For this reason, in this embodiment, after transferring the ink of a plurality of used areas having peeling marks to the surface of the image receiving ribbon 7 without any gaps, the image receiving ribbon 7 is rewound once and a plurality of inks are transferred onto the surface of the image receiving ribbon 7. The ink was transferred repeatedly. In this embodiment, the image receiving ribbon 7 is rewound 10 times, and the ink is superimposed and transferred to the same area on the image receiving ribbon 7 approximately 10 times each.

  As a result, the ink having the peeling trace from which the print content can be read overlaps on the image receiving ribbon 7 a plurality of times, making it impossible to read each piece of information. Therefore, as described above, the image receiving ribbon 7 that has been rewound and used 10 times has no problem even if it is treated as normal waste, and there is no fear that the contents of the printed information will leak.

  As described above, according to the printing apparatus 10 of the present embodiment, the image receiving ribbon 7 and the heat roller for transferring the ink remaining on the ink ribbon 1 are added to the configuration of the conventional thermal transfer type printing apparatus using the thermal head. With the simple and inexpensive configuration simply by adding the configuration 6, the peeling marks formed on the ink ribbon 1 can be reliably made unreadable, and the information transferred to the image receiving ribbon 7 can also be made unreadable. It is possible to reliably prevent leakage of personal information and the like. In particular, the disposal process can be facilitated by forming the image receiving ribbon 7 with a paper strip that is easy to cut.

  FIG. 4 shows a modification of the printing apparatus 10 according to the first embodiment described above. Since the printing apparatus 10 ′ according to this modification has the same structure as the above-described printing apparatus 10 except that it has a thermal head 60 instead of the heat roller 6, the same reference numerals are given to components that function in the same manner. Detailed description thereof will be omitted.

  By adopting the thermal head 60 instead of the heat roller 6 as in this modification, it is possible to print different character information on the image receiving ribbon 7 each time. Since meaningless information is selected as information to be printed by the thermal head 60, the image receiving ribbon 7 on which the meaningless information is transferred by being superimposed a plurality of times can be discarded as it is.

  On the other hand, after the personal information that should not be leaked is printed on the transfer medium M, the ink ribbon 1 side puts this information, that is, different information on the image receiving ribbon 7 by the thermal head 60 on the ink peeling trace. By printing, the information printed on the transfer medium M becomes unreadable and information leakage is prevented. Alternatively, by using the thermal head 60, only the character information printed on the transfer medium M can be transferred to the image receiving ribbon 7 in a pinpoint manner, and only the character can be effectively removed.

  For example, when the geometric pattern shown in FIG. 5 is printed on the image receiving ribbon 7 using the used area of the ink ribbon 1 via the thermal head 60, the characters printed on the transfer medium M as shown in FIG. A pattern in which only the information portion is white is printed on the image receiving ribbon 7. By making the pattern printed on the image receiving ribbon 7 an appropriate pattern, it is difficult to read the information printed on the transfer medium M from the image receiving ribbon 7 by itself, but if you look closely, the information printed on the transfer medium M will be read. I can do it.

  For this reason, in order to dispose of the image receiving ribbon 7 without any problem, a different pattern is printed on the image receiving ribbon 7 in a plurality of times using different used areas of the ink ribbon 1 as in the first embodiment. It is conceivable to adopt this method. Alternatively, as shown in FIG. 8, the image receiving ribbon 7 itself can be cut by the cutting machine 12 and discarded. In the latter case, the image receiving ribbon 7 can be cut more easily by cutting the base film of the flexible ink ribbon 1 by using paper as the material of the image receiving ribbon 7.

  On the other hand, when the pattern shown in FIG. 5 is transferred to the image receiving ribbon 7 using the used area of the ink ribbon 1 via the thermal head 60, an ink peeling trace as shown in FIG. 7 is formed on the ink ribbon 1 side. Is done. In this case, it is not possible to determine which information is the portion where the portion where the ink is peeled off by printing the information on the transfer medium M and the portion where the portion where the ink is peeled off is transferred by transferring the pattern of FIG. It is difficult to interpret character information other than the pattern. For this reason, by making the pattern of FIG. 5 into an appropriate shape, the ink ribbon 1 can be disposed of without any problem.

  Note that the pattern of FIG. 5 is an apparatus using the heat roller 6 such as the apparatus shown in FIG. 1 or FIG. 8 except that the thermal head 60 is used to print the pattern of FIG. It can also be formed by a method of providing the same convex pattern as the pattern of FIG. 5 on the peripheral surface of the heat roller 6. In this case, a pattern as shown in FIG. 6 can be formed on the image receiving ribbon 7 by pressing the pattern-shaped convex portion of the circumferential surface of the heat roller 6 against the image receiving ribbon 7 from the back side of the ink ribbon 1, and also shown in FIG. Such a peeling mark is formed on the ink ribbon 1.

FIG. 9 shows a schematic diagram of a printing apparatus 20 according to the second embodiment of the present invention.
The printing apparatus 20 has a transfer mechanism 22 (removal unit) using a piece of paper instead of the image receiving ribbon 7 of the printing apparatus 10 of the first embodiment described above, and the printing apparatus of the first embodiment. 10 have the same structure, the same reference numerals are given to components that function in the same manner, and detailed description thereof is omitted.

  The transfer mechanism 22 is disposed between the guide roller 4 and the take-up shaft 3 at a position facing the heat roller 6 with the ink ribbon 1 interposed therebetween, and is a piece of paper (here, illustrated) in a posture substantially parallel to the surface of the ink ribbon 1. A case 23 for setting (omitted). An opening 23 a for pressing a piece of paper toward the ink ribbon 1 by the pressing roller 24 is provided at a portion of the case 23 facing the heat roller 6.

  The piece of paper set in the case 23 is moved toward the opening 23a by the two guide rollers 25, and is pressed against the ink ribbon 1 side by driving the pressing roller 24 in the direction of arrow S in the figure. At this time, since the heat roller 6 is sandwiched between the ink ribbon 1 and the pressure roller 24 is pressed, a piece of paper is sandwiched between the two rollers 24 and 6 together with the ink ribbon 1 and pressed against the surface of the ink ribbon 1. It will be. In this state, the two guide rollers 25 are rotated in both forward and reverse directions, and the used region of the ink ribbon 1 is transferred to the surface of the paper piece.

  Also in the present embodiment, since information may be leaked in one transfer, the used area is transferred by overlapping a plurality of times on one piece of paper. As a result, as in the first embodiment described above, the peeling trace remaining on the ink ribbon 1 can be surely removed, and the print information can be made unreadable from the ink transferred to the paper piece. Can be reliably prevented.

  Further, by using a piece of paper as a medium for transferring ink from the ink ribbon 1 as in the second embodiment described above, it is not necessary to incorporate an image receiving ribbon as in the printing apparatus 10 of the first embodiment. The apparatus configuration can be made cheaper. In particular, since there are almost no restrictions on the material and size of the paper pieces to be used, it is possible to use inexpensively available media such as recycled paper. For example, in an operation in which information is printed on a sticker with release paper as the transfer medium M, the release paper is discarded after the sticker is pasted. Therefore, an unnecessary release paper is used as a piece of transfer paper. By reusing, cost can be reduced. In this case, the release paper can be used without any problem by transferring the ink on the back side of the release paper.

  Note that the present invention is not limited to the above-described embodiment as it is, and can be embodied by modifying the constituent elements without departing from the scope of the invention in the implementation stage. Various inventions can be formed by appropriately combining a plurality of constituent elements disclosed in the above-described embodiments. For example, you may delete some components from all the components shown by embodiment mentioned above. Furthermore, you may combine the component covering different embodiment suitably.

  For example, in the above-described embodiment, the case where the separate type ink ribbon 1 in which both ends are wound around the roller has been described. However, the present invention is not limited to this, and an ink ribbon integrated in a cassette shape is adopted. Also good.

  In the above-described embodiment, the case where a medium having a relatively short length in the transport direction is assumed as the transfer medium M has been described. However, the present invention is not limited to this, and depending on the printing purpose, a long or roll paper is used. A medium of a type may be used as the transfer medium M.

  Furthermore, in the above-described embodiment, the case where the present invention is applied to a printing apparatus that uses the ink ribbon 1 as an ink holding medium that holds ink on the surface has been described. You may apply this invention to the apparatus for removing the peeling trace of the ink which remained on the carbon paper.

1 is a schematic diagram of a printing apparatus according to a first embodiment of the present invention. FIG. 2 is a diagram illustrating an example of character information printed on a transfer medium by the apparatus of FIG. 1. The figure which shows an example of the peeling trace formed in the ink ribbon side when the information of FIG. 2 is printed. Schematic which shows the modification of the apparatus of FIG. FIG. 5 is a schematic view showing a pattern formed on an image receiving ribbon by a thermal head incorporated in the apparatus of FIG. 4 or a heat roller incorporated in the apparatus of FIG. 1. FIG. 6 is a schematic diagram showing a pattern transferred from a used region of an ink ribbon to an image receiving ribbon using the pattern of FIG. 5. Schematic which shows the peeling trace formed in an ink ribbon when the pattern of FIG. 6 is formed in an image receiving ribbon. Schematic which shows the apparatus structure provided with the cutting device which cuts an image receiving ribbon. Schematic which shows the printing apparatus which concerns on 2nd Embodiment of this invention.

Explanation of symbols

  DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1 ... Ink ribbon, 2 ... Delivery axis | shaft, 3 ... Winding axis | shaft, 4 ... Guide roller, 5 ... Thermal head, 6 ... Heat roller, 7 ... Image receiving ribbon, 10, 10 ', 10 ", 20 ... Printing apparatus, 12 ... cutting machine, 22 ... transfer mechanism, M ... medium to be transferred.

Claims (8)

An ink holding medium holding transfer ink on the surface;
A printing unit that prints information on the transfer medium by partially peeling the ink held on the surface of the ink holding medium and transferring it to the transfer medium;
A removal unit that at least partially removes ink remaining on the ink holding medium so that the printed content is unreadable from the ink holding medium after printing;
A printing apparatus comprising: The removal section is
An ink removal medium for transferring at least part of the ink remaining on the ink holding medium;
Transfer means for transferring at least part of the ink remaining in the ink holding medium to the ink removing medium;
The printing apparatus according to claim 1, further comprising: A moving mechanism for reciprocally moving the ink removal medium with respect to the ink peeling trace transferred from the ink holding medium to the transfer medium in the printing unit;
The printing apparatus according to claim 2, wherein the transfer unit transfers the ink in the used area including the peeling trace onto the ink removing medium by overlapping the plurality of times.   The printing apparatus according to claim 2, further comprising a cutting machine that cuts the used ink removing medium.   The transfer means includes a heat roller that heats and melts ink remaining on the ink holding medium with the ink holding medium sandwiched between the ink removing medium and transfers the ink to the ink removing medium. The printing apparatus according to claim 2 or claim 3.   The printing apparatus according to claim 5, wherein a pattern-shaped convex portion is provided on a peripheral surface of the heat roller.   The printing apparatus according to claim 2, wherein the transfer unit includes a thermal head provided at a position sandwiching the ink holding medium with the ink removing medium. A printing step of printing information on the transfer medium by partially peeling the ink held on the surface of the ink holding medium and transferring it to the transfer medium;
A removal step of removing at least partially the ink remaining on the ink holding medium so that the printed content becomes unreadable from the ink holding medium after printing;
A printing method characterized by comprising:

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