JPH04115957A - Ultrasonic head assembly and its method of printing control - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE: To improve a printed state by laterally displacing printing heads in charge of printing dot lines, disposing them, and efficiently transmitting an ultrasonic vibration. CONSTITUTION: Respective printing heads 4 are slidably provided in a plate 30, and pressed to a printing sheet 24 by a spring 32. The heads 4 are in charge of lines of the printing pattern. The heads 4 are different from a longitudinal one array, but disposed in a laterally displaced state. A longitudinal deviation of the heads 4 is one dot in the longitudinal direction of a character pattern. Seven printing wires 38 can be disposed in a range of a height of the character pattern without warping the wire 38 by laterally deviating in this manner. An influence to printing of the lateral deviation of the head is regulated by controlling a printing timing.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION [Field of Industrial Application] The present invention relates to a head assembly of a wire dot printer using an ultrasonic vibrator as a printing drive source and a printing control method thereof.

[Prior Art] In conventional general wire dot printers,
The tips of the print wires are arranged in a vertical line to correspond to the vertical columns of the character pattern.

In the prior art, the tips of a plurality of print wires are aligned so as to be concentrated in a single vertical line of the character pattern by warping the print wires from the wire drive section to the tips of the wires.

[Interlayer Points to be Solved by the Invention] However, the ultrasonic vibrator is a conventional solenoid and blades, and the driving energy is small, so if the wire is warped, the vibration energy transmission efficiency decreases and good printing cannot be obtained.

The present invention is directed to ultrasonic printing with improved printing density.

The purpose is to provide head assemblies.

Another object of the present invention is to provide a printing control method for printing using the above head assembly.

[Means for Solving the Problems] In the present invention, one print wire is used to print all dots in one character pattern in the row direction (horizontal direction). The above object has been achieved by providing a head assembly in which the number of dot rows is equal to the number of dot rows, and the head assemblies are arranged so as to be laterally offset from each other.

Furthermore, the present invention provides a printing control method for an ultrasonic printer using the above-mentioned single-head assembly by shifting print data according to the horizontal deviation of each print head and setting up the data for each print head. I was able to do that.

[Example] Next, embodiments of the present invention will be described using the drawings.

FIG. 1 shows one embodiment of a head assembly according to the present invention.

In the figure, 2 indicates a head assembly, and 10 indicates an ink ribbon. 24 indicates printing paper, and 26 indicates a platen. The printing paper 24 is transported in the direction of arrow B by a transport device (not shown). The ink ribbon 10 is rotatably supported by a carriage (not shown), and the head assembly 2 is supported by a support base 6. The support stand 6 is slidably supported by a carriage (not shown). Support stand 6
At one end, there is a head pressure adjustment device 8 for sliding the support base 6.
is connected. I! ! ! The device 8 consists of a linear stepping motor 12 and a mounting base 14.
0 is fixed to a carriage (not shown) Support stand 6
and II adjustment device 8 are connected by two studs 18 provided at one end of the support base 6 and a spring 22 provided between the hole 20 of the support base 14 and the motor rotating shaft 16. Since the rotating shaft 16 of the motor 12 moves in the axial direction in accordance with the rotation, the support base 6 and the head assembly 2 can be slid in accordance with the rotation of the motor.

The carriage (not shown) moves along the platen 26 with an arrow A-
It is movable in the A direction, and the movement is performed by a carrier (not shown) or a driving device.

The head assembly 2 includes seven print heads 4 within a plate 30. The print head 4 includes an ultrasonic vibrator (piezoelectric element) 34, a horn 36, and a print wire 3.
It consists of 8. Each print head 4 is slidably mounted within a plate 30 and is urged toward the print paper 24 by a spring 32 .

Each print head 4 is responsible for each line of the print pattern. The print heads 4 are conventionally arranged in a single vertical row, but are now arranged in wings and are arranged laterally offset from each other. As before, the vertical deviation between the print heads 4 is one dot in the vertical direction of the character pattern. By shifting laterally in this way, it becomes possible to arrange the seven printing wires 4 within the height range of the character pattern without warping the printing wires 38. The effect of horizontal print head misalignment on printing can be controlled by controlling the print timing as described below. ! ! Next, a printing control method for a printer using the head assembly 2 of the present invention will be explained.

FIG. 2 is a diagram showing the relationship between the position of the head assembly 2 and printing. In the figure, 40 indicates the position of the tip of the head assembly 2, and P1 to P7 indicate the tip of the gamma card 4 for each of the seven prints. Further, the section ■ represents a front adjustment area, ■ represents a printable area, and ■ represents a rear adjustment area. Areas (2) and (2) are areas required to completely print the first and last characters in one line because the dot 4 is shifted laterally to the printing character in charge of each print line.

In other words, i! [At the start position shown in Figure 2 (a), the first dot PI is ready to print the leftmost dot of the first character on the printing machine 1, which is in charge of printing the first line of dots in the dot pattern of the character. be. Thereafter, the entire head assembly 40 is moved to the right by the Kinaridge drive *S+ (not shown), and the first printing is performed by the button PI. In this embodiment, adjacent printheads (eg, Pl and P2) are each laterally offset from each other by a distance of three characters. This spacing is printed wire 3
This is for arranging the print head without warping the ultrasonic transducer 34 and the horn, and is determined by the shape and size of the ultrasonic vibrator 34 and the horn. As shown in FIG. 2(b), when the leading end 40 of the assembly 2 moves by three characters, the second print head P2 starts printing the second row of dots of the dot pattern of the first character. Thereafter, dots from the third line to the seventh line are printed every three characters by the print heads P3 to P7, resulting in the state shown in FIG. 2(C). FIG. 2(d) shows a state in which all characters have been printed. As can be seen from the above description, when the head assembly 2 of the present invention is used, adjustment areas (2) and (2) are required for moving the leading end 40 of the assembly 2 before and after the printable area (2).

In the case of this embodiment, the size of the ■ in the lil regular area is 18 characters each.

FIG. 3 shows a block diagram of an embodiment of a control device for printing using the head assembly 2 of the present invention. In the figure, reference numeral 42 denotes a controller, which is composed of one chip CPυ and controls the entire printing operation. 44 is a buffer pointer, and a dedicated pointer is prepared for each ROW (row: corresponding to each print wire). Here, the character code (print code) stored in the print data buffer 46
Seven sets of addresses are stored for reading out each of the print heads P1 to P7. The address calculation unit 48 is a ROM
controller 42 according to the stored calculation formula.
An address indicating the start position of the font data stored in the font pattern storage section 50 is calculated according to the control signal. Reference numeral 52 denotes a character pattern processing section, which inputs the font pattern read out from the font pattern/storage section 50 under the control of the controller 42 according to the address calculated by the address meter 1 section 48 to a print pattern register for each print head. 64 (hereinafter referred to as register 64). The reno star 54 is for holding data to be sent to the print head 4.

The operation of the control device shown in FIG. 3 and the printing control method of the present invention will be explained using FIGS. 4 to 7. Figure 4 is a flowchart showing the printing control method of the present invention.

After the initial setting of the square, buffer pointer 44, etc. (step 50 in FIG. 4; hereinafter steps are indicated by S), print data is sent from the host terminal (not shown) to the print data buffer 46. (In this example, the number of print data is 60 characters per line. This print data is stored in the print data buffer, but at this time, each character before and after the data to be actually printed is 1
Including space data for 8 characters, a total of 96 characters are stored in the print data buffer (852).

FIG. 5(a) shows the print image to be printed, and FIG. 5(b) shows the state in which the print data and space data (hereinafter both data are collectively referred to as print data) are stored in the print data buffer 46. .

When the print data is stored in the buffer 46, the controller 42 performs processing for reading out the print data corresponding to 1 dots PI to P7 for each print and sending it to the print head 4. Therefore, first, print data for each print head is read out according to the contents of the bubble pointer 44 (S54).
). Each buffer pointer 44 is set at initial setting (S5
The initial value is set to 0). Figure 6 shows each buffer.
Indicates the initial value of the pointer. These initial values each indicate the address of the print data buffer 46 at the time when each of the print heads Pi to P7 starts printing. As shown in FIG. 6, if the first address of print data buffer 1 is 1000, the initial value of the buffer pointer of the first print head Pi is 1012 (16ji number: the same applies hereinafter), P
21D initial value is 100F1...Pl
is 100o, with three characters for each print head. The contents of the buffer pointer 44 are incremented by one each time printing of one character is completed. Now, the head assembly 2 is in position D (nearly in FIG. 2(a) and in position 5).
As shown in figures (s) and (b), the first printed character is r
NJ, that is, the ASCrl code is "4E". All codes in the print data buffer 46 in FIGS. 5 and 6 below are shown in ASCII codes. In this way, from the initial value of the buffer pointer 44, the print code 4E (letter N) of the print head P1 and the print code 20 (blank print) from P2 to P are obtained.

Next, the address calculation unit 4 calculates the start address of the font data of the character corresponding to the code from the obtained printing hood.
8 (S56).

An example of the calculation formula is shown below.

Start address -A+B-C... (1) A:
Starting address of font pattern storage section B: Print code C: Number of bytes required to represent one character of font Now, assuming ^-500, C-6, apply the first print head PI to equation (1). Then, the first address is 500+
It becomes 4E・6-6D4. The font pattern storage unit 50 is accessed according to the calculation result, and the font data of the character to be printed is read out for each print head (35B).

FIG. 7(a) shows an example of the font pattern storage section 50. In this example, for efficient storage, the font data is stored by rotating the character 1<turn by 90 degrees and using 6 nozzles per character. FIG. 7(b) shows an image in which the stored font data of the character rNJ is specifically printed in dots. In this example, the leftmost bit of each byte is not used, and the lowest byte is used as a space.

Next, the font data read from the font pattern storage section 50 is processed by the character pattern processing section 52. Specifically, a character dot string is extracted according to the value of a column counter (not shown) (S60). The column counter is a counter that indicates the column position of the character pattern that is about to be printed. In this embodiment, the 90 degree rotation state is stored in six columns, so the column counter takes a value from 0 to 6, and is incremented by l each time printing of one column is completed. FIG. 7(e) shows a font data string taken out when the column counter is 0. Bits 1 to 7 extracted here correspond to each print head PI to P7 (dot 8 is not used), but since this data is related to the first print head Pl, only dot 1 is used. , the other bits 2 to 5 are not used at this stage and are discarded.

Therefore, as shown in FIG. 7 (<1), the contents of the dot l corresponding to the print head PI are extracted from the read font data string (C) and input into the dot l of the print pattern register 64.

Similarly, the font patterns of the necessary characters (code 20) are read out for the second to seventh print heads P2 to P7, and the print bit data is input to the print pattern register 54 for each print head (862 ,864～
560). When the print bit data for all print heads are complete, the print pattern register 5.4 is in the state shown in FIG. 7(e). At this stage, each print head P2~
Since P7 is all blank printing (code 20), the printing data bits in the figure are all 0''.

Once the data for all print heads is set in the print pattern register 54, it is output to the print head 4 and printing starts (S64). When printing is completed, the column counter is incremented (S66), and then it is determined whether printing of one character (6 columns) has been completed (368).
). If it has not been completed, the process returns to step 54 and the same process is repeated. When printing of one character is completed, each buffer pointer is incremented and the column counter is cleared (S70). Similar processing is repeated until all printing in one line is completed (972).

When one line of printing is completed, the controller 42 requests the next line of print data from a POS terminal or the like, and in response, the data is input to the data buffer 46 and printing is repeated.

[Effects of the Invention] As explained above, in the head assembly of the present invention, the print heads responsible for printing each dot row are arranged horizontally offset from each other so that ultrasonic vibrations are efficiently transmitted. By doing this, we were able to improve the printing condition.

Further, the print control method of the present invention shifts the print pattern data to be printed by each print head according to the deviation in the horizontal arrangement of each print head, and sets up the print pattern data.
Printing of the above print head assembly was achieved.

[Brief explanation of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a diagram showing one embodiment of the head assembly of the present invention, and FIG. 2 is a diagram showing the relationship between the head assembly, the position of each print head, and printed characters. Figure 3 shows the printing of the present invention. FIG. 4 is a block diagram showing an example of a control device for printing using the print assembly, and FIG. 4 is a flow chart showing the printing control method of the present invention. Figure 5 (a) represents the printed image, (b)
indicates the contents of the print data buffer 46. FIG. 6 is a diagram for explaining each buffer pointer 44. 7th
Figure (a) shows an example of the font pattern storage section 50,
(b) shows an image of memorized characters [N] being printed in dots, (C) shows the dot data extracted when column 0, and (d) shows an example of extracting the bits corresponding to the print head PI. , (e) shows a state in which the print bits and data of all print heads PI to P7 are aligned and arranged in the print pattern renostar. 2...Head. Acenobu IJ, 4-f11 head, 10... ink ribbon, 24... printing paper, 2
6...Platen, 34...Ultrasonic transducer, 36...
・Ho 7.38...Printing wire, 40...Hemet・
Tip of the assembly, PI to P7... Tip of each of the 7 print heads Application agent Yoshiguruma Nishiyama

Claims (2)

[Claims] (1) A multi-head printer that has multiple print heads that use an ultrasonic vibrator as the print drive source for the print wire, and each print head is responsible for printing each dot row of the dot pattern of the character. In the head assembly, each of the print heads is shifted in the horizontal direction according to the external size of the ultrasonic transducer or horn while maintaining the vertical spacing as the vertical spacing between the dots of the character pattern. A printhead assembly for an ultrasonic printer, wherein the printhead is arranged such that the print wire is not warped. (2) A printing control method for an ultrasonic printer using the print head assembly according to claim 1, wherein the printing of each print head is controlled according to the deviation in the horizontal arrangement of each print head. A print control method in which the dot pattern data of the desired character is shifted for each print head and aligned and arranged in the print pattern register.