JPH02248269A - Printer - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To enable printing speed to be improved without causing an omission of necessary information by a method wherein a means which stops excitation by a continued second dot in the case of a dot pattern in which a same printing element is not continuously excited is established. CONSTITUTION:In the case where a printing data receiving from a host apparatus 1 is printed, a head control circuit 7 outputs a head control signal by a head driving signal of a main control part 2, reads a printing dot pattern from a pattern memory 4, transfers to a thermal head 6, and a thermal head electrification pulse together therewith applies thereto. A motor control circuit 8 receives a continuous dot presence signal to be outputted from an information storage part 5 by a motor driving command of the main control part 2, prepares a motor phase advancive timing pulse, and a paper feed motor 9 is rotated based on this signal. Then, in the case where a continuous dot exists, a data is altered so that electrification to a continued second dot may not be performed, an electrification cycle to the thermal head electrification pulse has the same cycle as traditional one, and paper carrying speed becomes doubled.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION [Field of Industrial Application] The present invention relates to a printing device, and in particular to a line type thermal printing device suitable for a ticket issuing printer that requires high-speed printing.
The present invention relates to a line type printing device.

[Conventional technology]

As a conventional method for improving the printing speed of a printing device, for example, a method disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 170358/1983 is known.

In this method, the dot patterns are not thinned out when normal printing is performed, but the dot patterns are thinned out when high speed printing (draft printing) is performed.

[Problem to be solved by the invention]

In the above-mentioned conventional technology, since a specific dot pattern row is thinned out, in the case of a pattern of one dot row, this pattern is thinned out and a single character becomes illegible, or important graphic information is missing. there were.

Also, even if the pattern is not printed at all.

There was also the problem that the printing speed could only be increased to the same level as in the normal case.

The present invention has been made in view of the above-mentioned circumstances, and its purpose is to solve the above-mentioned problems in the conventional technology, and to improve printing speed without causing the loss of necessary information. The goal is to provide equipment.

[Means to solve the problem]

The above-mentioned object of the present invention is to prevent the same printing element from being excited continuously in a line-type printing device that prints two figures of characters or the like in a dot pattern on printing paper by selectively exciting the printing elements of the line-type printing unit. In the case of a dot pattern, a printing apparatus characterized by having a speed control means for controlling the conveyance speed of the printing paper so as to improve it, or
A storage means for storing the dot pattern, and a storage means for storing the dot pattern.
means for logically comparing the pattern with a previous dot pattern stored in the storage means;

This is achieved by a printing device characterized in that it has means for stopping the excitation by the second successive dot in the case of a dot pattern in which the same printing element is not successively excited.

[Effect]

In the printing apparatus according to the present invention, focusing on the continuity of dot pattern information added to the same printing element of the line type printing unit, when the dot pattern is continuous,
By thinning out this part, the printing speed can be substantially doubled. Furthermore, when the dot patterns added to the same printing element are not consecutive, the printing speed is substantially doubled without thinning out the dot patterns.

In other words, the dot line pattern received from the host device is temporarily stored in memory, and the previous dot line pattern data is compared with the current dot line pattern data, and (1) if there is no matching pattern, simply increases the transport speed of the printing paper (2) if there are matching patterns, that is.

If there is a continuous pattern, the current dot line pattern is changed to a pattern that is not printed and stored in the memory, thereby eliminating the continuous dot line pattern and improving the conveyance speed of the printing paper.

The above-mentioned control can be performed by commands from a host device.

〔Example〕

Embodiments of the present invention will be described in detail below with reference to the drawings.

FIG. 1 shows the configuration of a line-type thermal printing device (hereinafter simply referred to as a "printing device") that is an embodiment of the present invention, together with a printer control device that is a host device of the printing device shown in this embodiment. In figure 0, which is a block diagram, l
indicates a printer control device, and 0 indicates a printing device. Note that 2 is the main control unit that performs overall control, and 3 is the current printing pattern data (hereinafter simply referred to as "pattern data").
4 is a pattern memory that stores the pattern data, 5 is an information storage unit that stores the above-mentioned continuous dot presence information, and 7 is the above-mentioned main unit. a head control circuit that controls the thermal head 6 based on commands from the control unit 2;
Reference numeral 8 designates a motor control circuit which generates a motor phase advance timing pulse based on a command from the main control section 2, and 9 represents a motor driven by the motor phase advance timing pulse from the motor control circuit 8.

If the print data sent from the printer control device 1 and received by the main control unit 2 is a dot pattern, the print data is
It is stored in the pattern memory 4.

If the print data is code information, it is developed into a dot pattern by a character generator (not shown) in the main control section 2 and stored in the pattern memory 4 as well.

The above-mentioned comparator 3 compares the pattern data sent from the main control section 2 this time with the previous pattern data read out from the pattern memory 4, and calculates continuous dot presence/absence information ( D,) and store it in the information storage unit 5.
It has the function of storing data in In Fig. 2, Dn-, Dn indicate the previous and current dot pattern data, respectively, Do is the continuous dot presence information calculated from this, and Dn' is the data after conversion for continuous dots. It shows.

An example of a pattern created using the converted data Dn' for continuous dots based on the comparison by the comparator 3 is shown in FIG. 3. FIG. 3(a) shows the original dot pattern; b) shows the dot pattern after conversion. In addition,
The broken line Q mark indicates a dot pattern that has been thinned out by one.

FIG. 4 is a timing chart for explaining the operation of the fifth embodiment. The operation of the two embodiments will be described below with reference to FIGS. 1 to 4.

In this embodiment, the motor phase advance timing pulse is
It is configured to transmit at twice the frequency of the conventional one. Thereby, the conveyance speed of printing paper can be substantially doubled. In this case, the processing (conversion) of the print pattern is performed as follows.

When printing print data received from host device 1,
The head control circuit 7 receives a head drive command from the main control unit 2.
outputs a head control signal, reads the print dot pattern from the pattern memory 4, and transfers it to the thermal head 6.
At the same time, a thermal head energizing pulse is applied.

The motor control circuit 8 receives the continuous dot presence/absence signal output from the information storage section 5 according to the motor drive command from the main control section 2, creates a motor phase advance timing pulse, and controls the paper feed motor based on this signal. 9 rotates. When the motor 9 rotates, the printing paper is conveyed by a paper feeding mechanism (not shown).

When the continuous dot presence/absence signal is "1", the data is changed so that the second consecutive dot is not energized, as shown in Figure 2, so the energization cycle for the thermal head energization pulse is changed to the energization cycle of the thermal head energization pulse. As shown in FIG. 4, the cycle is the same as the conventional one, the conveyance speed of the printing paper is doubled, and printing is performed at the same printing speed as the conventional one. On the other hand, when the continuous dot presence/absence signal is ItOII, as shown in Figure 4, the energization period for the thermal head energization pulse is twice the conventional period, and the printing paper conveyance speed is doubled. This means that printing will be performed at twice the printing speed of the conventional printing speed.

However, even in the latter case, since the same heating element is not energized continuously, sufficient cooling time can be secured even when printing at twice the conventional cycle, and there is no deterioration in print quality. No.

According to the above embodiment, the dot line pattern received from the host device is temporarily stored in the memory, and the previous dot line pattern data and the current dot line pattern data are compared.

(1) If there are no matching patterns, simply increase the conveyance speed of the printing paper. (2) If there are matching patterns, that is, if there are continuous patterns, the current dot By changing the line pattern to a non-printing pattern and storing it in memory, we have eliminated the continuous dot line pattern and improved the conveyance speed of the printing paper.

The effect is that the printing speed can be substantially doubled. Further, since the entire space can be transported at a higher speed, there is an effect that the printing speed of one sheet of paper can be significantly improved.

In the above embodiment, an example was shown in which the present invention was applied to a line-type thermal printing device, but the present invention is not limited to this, and can be widely applied to line-type printing devices using other methods. Needless to say.

〔Effect of the invention〕

As described in detail above, according to the present invention, in a line type printing device that prints two characters, etc. in a dot pattern on printing paper by selectively exciting the printing elements of a line type printing unit, the same printing In the case of a dot pattern in which the elements are not continuously excited, by having a speed control means for controlling the conveying speed of the printing paper to increase it, it is possible to improve the printing speed without causing the loss of necessary information. This has the remarkable effect that it is possible to realize a printing device that does the following.

[Brief explanation of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a control block diagram showing the configuration of a printing device that is an embodiment of the present invention together with a printer control device that is a higher-level device, FIG. 2 is a diagram showing dot pattern conversion logic, and FIG. 3 is a diagram showing before and after conversion. FIG. 4 is a timing chart for explaining the operation of the embodiment.

Claims (1)

[Claims] 1. In a line-type printing device that prints characters, figures, etc. in a dot pattern on printing paper by selectively exciting the printing elements of a line-type printing unit, the same printing element is continuously excited. 1. A printing apparatus comprising a speed control means for increasing the conveyance speed of printing paper in the case of a dot pattern that is not printed. 2. In order to detect a dot pattern in which the same printing element is not continuously excited, a storage means for storing the dot pattern and a logic between the previous dot pattern and the current dot pattern stored in the storage means are used. 2. The printing apparatus according to claim 1, further comprising means for performing the comparison. 3. In a line type printing device that prints characters, figures, etc. in a dot pattern on printing paper by selectively exciting the printing elements of a line type printing unit, a storage means for storing the dot pattern, and a storage means for storing the dot pattern, and the current dot pattern. means for performing a logical comparison with a previous dot pattern stored in the storage means; and means for stopping excitation by a second consecutive dot in the case of a dot pattern in which the same printing element is not continuously excited. A printing device characterized by: 4. The printing apparatus according to claim 3, wherein the conveying speed of the printing paper is increased when the excitation by the second consecutive dot is stopped. 5. When storing the dot pattern in the dot pattern storage means, the data is changed so that the second consecutive dot is not excited.
or 4. The printing device according to any one of 4. 6. The printing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the printing apparatus performs the operation based on a command from a host device.