JPH0577443A - Printing control device of serial dot matrix printer - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To enhance the degree of freedom of the expression of a sentence and to enable printing of high quality by arbitrarily arranging characters of various sizes on printing paper by providing a head moving means moving a head along the feed direction of printing paper to a head mounting stand moved in a printing direction. CONSTITUTION:In a serial dot matrix printer, a head 8 constituted of ink jet nozzles or impact wire pins and heating elements is selectively driven by a printing command to print a character or a bit image. The carriage 5 having the head 8 attached thereto is sent in a line direction by a carriage motor 6. Printing paper is sent in the direction shown by an arrow by a paper feed motor 201. In this constitution, the head 8 is moved in a vertical direction by a figure direction carriage motor 6 through a figure feed mechanism 7. That is, the head 8 is moved in the direction shown by an arrow 25 and printing is applied to printing paper 19 held to a planar state by a procket wheel 17 and a platen 22.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a serial dot matrix printer which prints a character or bit image by selectively driving an ink jet nozzle, an impact wire pin or a head composed of a heating element in response to a print command. The present invention relates to a print control device when characters in one line have different sizes.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art Among printers for printing characters or bit images with a dot matrix, serial type printers that use ink jet nozzles, impact wire pins or heating elements as print heads are excellent in cost performance and are therefore widely popular. is doing. These printers are provided with a control mode for changing the size of a print character. As a control mode, for example, a normal character is double-width-enlarged in the row direction or doubled in the column direction. There are vertical double-width printing, script printing that prints at half the height of normal characters, and quadruple-size printing that doubles normal characters in both the row and column directions.

[0003]

However, in various printing control modes, as shown in FIG.
(A)] and quadruple-size printing [FIG. 4 (b)], etc., in a mode in which the size of characters is changed in the printing column direction, the printing paper is fed by two lines on the serial printer mechanism and one line is printed by two lines.
Since the method of printing is divided into lines, one line is blank except for the enlarged character part. Therefore, according to the conventional control method, when the print character becomes larger, the print area other than the enlarged character in one line becomes blank for several lines. The change could not be more than doubled. As one of the methods for solving this drawback, there is a method of moving the printing paper relative to the head, but if the movement distance of the printing paper becomes large, it becomes difficult to secure the printing position accuracy. There was a drawback.

[0004]

A print control device for a serial dot matrix printer according to the present invention is a head mount (hereinafter referred to as a carriage) which moves in a print line direction.
Further, it is characterized in that it is provided with a head moving means along the feeding direction of the printing paper.

[0005]

According to the print control method of the serial dot matrix printer of the present invention, characters of various sizes can be arbitrarily arranged on the printing paper, which greatly improves the degree of freedom in expressing sentences and enables printing with high print quality. Becomes

[0006]

The present invention will be described below in accordance with one embodiment. FIG. 1 shows a mechanism configuration diagram. In FIG. 1, 6 is a column direction carriage motor for vertically moving the head according to the present invention, and 7 is a column feed mechanism of a head 8. 1 is a carriage motor for feeding the carriage 5 in the row direction, and 20 is a paper feeding motor for feeding the printing paper 19 in the direction of arrow 21. The drive system of the present invention is constituted by these three motors. The head 8 attached to the column feed mechanism by the column direction carriage motor 6 is moved in the direction of arrow 25, and the sprocket wheel 17 and the platen 22 print on the printing paper held on the plane. In the case of the present embodiment, the mechanism is shown assuming an ink jet head as the head 8, but in the case of an impact dot head or a thermal head, the platen may be configured to be flat in order to hold the printing paper on a flat surface. ..

FIG. 2 shows a control block diagram. External device 3
The data input from 0 is accumulated in the input data buffer 31, and the central processing unit (CPU) 32 reads / writes as print data according to the processing content programmed in the read-only memory (ROM) 33.
AM) 34. The print data includes a paper feed control unit 36 by the data processing control unit 35, a line direction carriage control unit 37 that moves the head 8 in the line direction, a column direction carriage control unit 38 that moves the head in the vertical direction on the carriage 5, and a head control. Required data is set in the section 39.

A control method in the case where the quadruple-size printing of FIG. 3A is a printing pattern included in one printing line will be described. Figure 3
Each number shown in the print block of (b) is one print line. Since the print data is expanded and printed line by line in the RAM, when there is quadruple-width character data, the portion corresponding to the diagonal line in FIG. The print data part is RA
It is expanded to M and one line is printed by data expansion twice.
When the RAM capacity is large, the print control is performed by expanding the print data in units of one line or more. FIG. 3C shows the operation sequence of the printing mechanism. In the figure, an arrow A indicates a moving direction of the carriage, an arrow B indicates a moving direction of the head, and an arrow C indicates a paper feeding direction. The numbering of each arrow represents the order of processing. In the case of the print pattern shown in FIG. 3A, first, in order to print the quadruple-width character on the first line, the paper is fed by two lines in the direction of arrow C1 to determine the baseline for printing.
Simultaneously with this paper feeding operation, the head is moved in the digit direction (arrow B2). After setting the print start position, the carriage is moved in the direction of arrow A3 to print the upper part of the quadruple-width character, and the head is moved in the digit direction (arrow B4) at the end point of the quadruple-width character.
And the carriage is moved in the direction of arrow A5 to print the lower part of the double-height character. Thereafter, the carriage is moved in the direction of arrow A6 and the head is moved in the digit direction (arrow B7) at the same time, and the remaining printing of the first line is performed while moving the carriage in the direction of arrow A8. Next, for printing the second line, printing is performed while moving the head in the column direction (arrow B9) and moving the carriage in the direction of arrow A10. Next, in order to print the third line, one line of paper is fed in the direction of arrow C11 while the position of the head in the column direction is held, and printing is performed while moving the carriage in the direction of arrow A12. Three lines of pattern are printed.

[0009]

As described above, according to the print control device of the serial dot matrix printer of the present invention, characters of various sizes can be arbitrarily arranged on the printing paper, and the degree of freedom in expressing a sentence is greatly improved. Printing with high print quality is possible.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a structural diagram of a print control method of a serial dot matrix printer according to an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram of a control circuit according to an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 3 is an operation explanatory diagram of the embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 4 is an explanatory diagram of a printing result by a conventional control method.

[Explanation of symbols]

 1 line direction carriage motor 5 carriage 6 digit direction carriage motor 7 digit feeding mechanism 8 head 17 sprocket wheel 19 printing paper 22 platen

Claims (1)

[Claims] 1. A serial dot matrix printer that prints characters or bit images by selectively driving a head composed of ink jet nozzles, impact wire pins, or heating elements in response to a print command, and a head mount that moves in the print direction. A print control device for a serial dot matrix printer, characterized in that the print control device further comprises head moving means along the feeding direction of the printing paper.