JPH02301455A - Thermal printer - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To apply a clear printing on the second double thermal recording paper even by a thermal printer to obtain a duplicate manuscript of the second paper in a simple manner by a method wherein dots forming font data of a symbol to be printed are doubled in adjacent areas in the emphasis printing of the symbol. CONSTITUTION:After a shift dot pattern Xs is formed by shifting a character dot pattern Xc rightward by one dot, an OR dot pattern Xo is formed by ORing the character dot pattern Xc with the shift dot pattern Xs in a control part 63. The OR dot pattern Xo is supplied from the control part 63 to buffer drivers 69a-69d through a shift register 65, and heating resistors R1-R384 are driven. In this manner, a dot pattern is doubled rightward by one dot to realize a boldface printing and to apply a sharp printing even on the second double thermal recording paper.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention [Objective of the Invention] (Industrial Application Field) The present invention relates to a thermal printer that prints on thermal recording paper, and more specifically, a thermal printer that can print on two sheets of thermal recording paper. Regarding.

(Prior art) When a printer is installed in a small and portable handheld terminal that can process various data, the range of its use can be further expanded by 1', making it extremely convenient. However, a thermal printer is generally used as a printer that can be installed in such a handy terminal.

Thermal printers have the advantages of no noise, relatively simple structure, and very easy handling.
Although it is ideal for handheld terminals, etc., it requires the use of special thermal recording paper as printing paper, and printing is performed by pressing the heating resistor of the thermal head against this thermal recording paper.

By the way, with a handy terminal equipped with such a thermal printer, you can create two copies of the output data printed by the printer, use one copy or give it to the other party, and keep the other copy as a copy. There are requests for copies of printed results such as output data.

(Problem to be Solved by the Invention) In handheld terminals, etc., there is a desire to print two copies of output data etc. printed by a printer, but when a thermal printer is used as the printer,
As mentioned above, thermal printers print thermally by pressing the heat-generating resistor of the thermal head onto thermal recording paper and using a chemical reaction. Even if printing is performed by pressing the heating resistor of the thermal head against the heat-sensitive recording paper, there is a problem in that the printing results recorded on the two sheets of thermosensitive recording paper, especially the printing results on the second sheet, are unclear.

In addition, in order to solve this problem, it is possible to increase the power supplied to the heating resistor that makes up the thermal head to increase the amount of heat generated by the heating resistor. In devices that use a battery as a power source, it is not possible to easily increase the power supplied to the heating resistor due to the power amount and lifespan of the battery, and it is not possible to increase the amount of power supplied to the heating resistor. too,
There is a limit to the amount of heat generated by the heating resistor, and there is a problem in that it is not possible to print clearly on the second sheet of two-layer thermal recording paper.

The present invention has been made in view of the above, and an object of the present invention is to provide a thermal printer that can print relatively clearly on two sheets of thermal recording paper.

[Structure of the invention]

(Means for Solving the Problems) In order to achieve the above object, the thermal printer of the present invention prints symbols including characters and codes on thermal recording paper, and includes font data of the symbols to be printed. dot area emphasizing means for emphasizing the dot area by overlapping the dots constituting the dot in the area adjacent to the dot;
The present invention further comprises a printing means for printing the symbol emphasized by overlapping the dot area by the dot area emphasizing means.

(Operation) In the thermal printer of the present invention, the dots constituting the font data of the symbol to be printed are overlapped with the adjacent area to emphasize and print the symbol to be printed.

(Example) Hereinafter, the present invention will be explained in detail using the drawings.

FIG. 1 is a perspective view showing the external configuration of a handy terminal to which a thermal printer according to an embodiment of the present invention is applied. The handy terminal shown in the figure is equipped with a thermal printer 1 according to an embodiment of the present invention on its upper part, and the figure shows the thermal recording paper 3 printed by the thermal printer 1 being fed out. ing.

Furthermore, the handy terminal shown in FIG. 1 is equipped with a liquid crystal display (LCD) 5 that displays various data on the lower side of the thermal printer 1, and furthermore, various data and command information are input to the lower side of the liquid crystal display 5. A keyboard 7 is provided.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram showing the overall circuit configuration of the handy terminal shown in FIG. 1. As shown in the same figure, in addition to the thermal printer 1, liquid crystal display 5, and keyboard 7 shown in FIG. A 64KB ROM 13 that is connected to the CPU II via a data bus 12 and stores fixed data and programs for various data processing, a 256KB, 512KB, or 768KB RAMI 5 that temporarily stores various data, and a timer. and a clock/calendar 17 that measures the date, a first kanji ROM 19 that stores JIS level 1 kanji, a second kanji ROM 21 that stores JIS 2nd level kanji, and the A keyboard interface 23 for the keyboard 7, an LCD controller 25 for the liquid crystal display 5, a backlight 27 for the liquid crystal display 5, a printer controller 29 for the thermal printer 1, a buzzer controller 31, and the buzzer controller 31.
a buzzer 33 driven by a buzzer 33; a communication interface 35 for communicating with an external device; an interface connector 37 and an optical coupling element 39 connected to the communication controller 35; a timer 41 for measuring various times;
-232C interface 43, R5-232C I/F connector 45 connected to the R3-232C interface 43, MS reader controller 47, and memory card reader/writer controller 51 that writes/reads data to/from the memory card. , an IC card reader/writer controller 55 that writes/reads data to/from an IC card, a cartridge-type main battery 59 that supplies operating voltage to the entire handy terminal, and a backup voltage for the RAM 15 and clock/calendar 17. In addition, the MS reader' connector 47, the memory card reader/writer controller 51, and the IC card reader/writer controller 55 have an auxiliary battery 61 that supplies the power, as shown by dotted lines.
An MS reader connector 49, a memory card R/W connector 53, and an IC card R/W connector 57 can be connected to each other.

FIG. 3 is a circuit diagram of the printer controller 29 that controls the thermal printer 1. As shown in FIG. As shown in the figure, the printer controller 29 is connected to the data bus 12 and connects to the CP via the data bus 12.
A control unit 63 that receives data to be printed from the UII and Kanji ROM 19.21 and controls the printing operation, and a shift register 65 connected to the control unit 63 and into which the print data received by the control unit 63 is sequentially input. a counter 67 connected to the shift register 65 and the control section 63, which counts the number of dots in the print data sequentially output from the shift register 65 and supplies this dot count value to the control section 63; first to fourth buffer drivers 69 connected to the output of the register 65 to temporarily store print data from the shift register 65 and drive a plurality of heat generating resistors constituting the thermal head;
a to 69d and these buffer drivers 69a to 69
384 heat generating resistors R1 to R384 are connected to each other and connected to each other in one row in a linear manner to form a line thermal head.

As shown in FIG. 1, the thermal printer 1 prints on a relatively narrow thermal recording paper 3 because it is used in a handheld terminal. Prints characters of 24 horizontal dots up to 16 digits. In the case of alphanumeric characters, up to 32 digits of horizontal 12-bit alphanumeric characters can be printed. Also, since the number of dots in the vertical direction is 24, the number of characters such as kanji is 24.
One character is represented by 4 dots x 24 dots, and one alphanumeric character is represented by 12 dots x 24 dots.

Therefore, in order to print characters of 24 horizontal dots up to 16 digits in one line, this thermal printer 1 generates 384 heat-generating parts corresponding to 24x16-384 dots arranged in series in one line in the form of a line as described above. Using a line thermal head consisting of resistors R1 to R384, while driving these 384 heating resistors R1 to R384, thermal recording paper 3 is
By extending 24 dots in the longitudinal direction by a length corresponding to 1 bit, characters of 24 dots x 24 dots can be printed.

In addition, 384 heating resistors R corresponding to 384 dots
If R1 to R384 are driven at the same time, due to the power capacity problem of the main battery 61 of the handy terminal, the 384 heating resistors R1 to R384 are divided into four groups of 96 each, that is, as shown in FIG. Body R289~R
The first heating resistor group RG1 consists of 384 heating resistors, and the second heating resistor group RG2 consists of heating resistors R193 to R288.
, a third heating resistor group RG3 consisting of heating resistors R97 to R192, and a fourth heating resistor group RG4 consisting of heating resistors R1 to R96, and each is divided into a buffer driver 698 to 69d. I'm trying to drive it. Note that each buffer driver 69a to 69d is controlled by the control unit 6.
3, and when these drive signals Sl to S4 are supplied, each buffer driver 6
9a to 69d are adapted to drive corresponding heating resistor groups.

FIG. 4 is a diagram showing a dot pattern, ie, font data, when printing the Chinese character "2" by this thermal printer. Figure (a) shows a dot pattern when printing on normal thermal recording paper 3, specifically, a single sheet of thermal recording paper 3 that is not stacked on two sheets, and Figure (b) shows a dot pattern on a double-layered thermal recording paper. This is a dot pattern when printing on paper 3.

As can be seen by comparing the dot patterns shown in both figures, the dot pattern for stacking two sheets shown in figure (b) has one dot in the horizontal direction compared to the normal dot pattern shown in figure (a). It has a thick, overlapping structure.

This is because, as mentioned above, when printing characters on two sheets of thermal recording paper 3, there is a problem that the printing on the second sheet becomes unclear, so in this thermal printer,
As shown in the same figure (, b), in the case of double-page printing, the dot pattern of the character to be printed is
The dots are overlapped and printed thickly, thereby making the printing on the second sheet clearer when two sheets are stacked.

As mentioned above, the control for printing thicker dot patterns by overlapping them horizontally by one dot for double-page printing creates data by shifting the dot pattern data of the character to be printed by one bit in the horizontal direction. This can be done by logically ORing this shift data and the dot pattern data of the character to be printed.

FIG. 5 is a diagram for explaining such control. In the figure, Xc is the dot pattern for one line of the character to be printed (character dot pattern Xc),
Xn is a dot pattern for one line of characters to be printed next (next character dot pattern Xn), and Xs is a dot pattern obtained by shifting the character dot pattern Xc to the right by one dot (shifted dot pattern Xs). , Xo are the shifted dot pattern Xs and the shifted dot pattern Xs
This is a dot pattern (or dot pattern Xo) obtained by taking the OR with .

That is, when the character dot pattern Xc of the character to be printed is manually input to the control section 63 of the printer controller 29 via the data bus 12, when printing the character on two sheets of thermal recording paper 3, , the character dot pattern Xc is shifted in the control section 63 to create a shifted dot pattern XS. In this shift, for example, as shown in the figure, if the character dot pattern Xc is rloolloolJ, the shifted dot pattern The area corresponding to one dot will be blank as shown by "-", but in this part, insert the rightmost "1" of the next character dot pattern Xn to be printed, for example, rolloooollJ, and then A shifted dot pattern Xs is created by.

When the shifted dot pattern Xs is created by shifting the character dot pattern Xc one dot to the right in this way,
rlloll of the or dot pattern Xo obtained by ORing the character dot pattern Xc and the shift dot pattern Xs
lolJ is created by the control unit 63, and this oradot pattern The dot pattern shown in Figure (b) is overlapped by one dot to the right to make it thicker and printed, making it look like 2 of the 2 sheets of thermal recording paper 3 stacked on top of each other.
This ensures that the printing is clear even on the first page.

In addition, in the above embodiment, in the case of double-sheet printing, the dot pattern of the character to be printed is shifted one dot to the right and printed in an overlapping manner, but the invention is not limited to this. The point is that the dot pattern of the character to be printed should be overlapped with the adjacent area to print thicker characters.

〔Effect of the invention〕

As explained above, according to the present invention, the dots constituting the font data of the symbol to be printed are overlapped with the adjacent area, and the symbol to be printed is emphasized and printed. Even in the evening, it is possible to clearly print on the second sheet of two-layered thermal recording paper, and a copy of the second sheet of the printing result can be easily obtained.

[Brief Description of the Drawings] Fig. 1 is a perspective view showing the overall appearance of a handy terminal using a thermal printer according to an embodiment of the present invention, and Fig. 2 is an overall circuit configuration of the handy terminal shown in Fig. 1. Figure 3 is a block diagram showing the circuit configuration of the printer controller used in the circuit of the handy terminal shown in Figure 2, Figure 4 is a dot pattern of characters printed by the printer controller shown in Figure 2. Figure 5 shows the printer controller in Figure 2.
FIG. 6 is an explanatory diagram of a dot pattern when printing multiple sheets. DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1...Thermal printer, 3...Thermal recording paper, 63---tirI control part, 65...Shift register, 67...Counter, RGI~RG4...Heating resistor group.

Claims (1)

[Claims] A thermal printer that prints symbols including characters and codes on thermal recording paper, and dot area enhancement that emphasizes the dot area by overlapping the dots that make up the font data of the symbol to be printed over the area adjacent to the dots. means and
1. A thermal printer comprising: printing means for printing the symbol emphasized by overlapping the dot area by the dot area emphasizing means.