JPH07121596B2 - Automatic marking device - Google Patents

Description

Description: TECHNICAL FIELD OF THE INVENTION The present invention relates to an automatic marking device, and more particularly to an automatic marking device for automatically marking a word input using a microcomputer.

[Prior art and its problems]

FIG. 5 shows a marking machine main body 10 which is generally used conventionally. The type wheel 1 is a metal disk having a plurality of type faces engraved on its peripheral surface. After the type to be engraved is selected, the type wheel 1 is pressed into contact with the XY stage 3 via the foil tape 2 and placed on the XY stage 3. The marking is placed on the object to be marked. The type wheel 1 can be exchanged according to the typeface, the material of the marking object, and the like. The foil tape 2 is sent by the winding mechanism 4 for each marking operation. With the development of microcomputers in recent years, such marking machines have come to be controlled by microcomputers. That is, the character code given by the microcomputer is decoded by the encoder 5, and the character selection pulse motor 6 rotates the character wheel 1 to automatically select the character to be marked. When the marking of one character is completed, the X-axis drive pulse motor 7 and the Y-axis drive pulse motor 8 cause the XY stage 3 to move in a plane to automatically move the marking object to the next marking position.

However, in such a conventional automatic marking device, since only the character code is sent from the microcomputer, the character gap between the marked characters is not constant and difficult to read. That is, as shown in FIG. 6 (a), the engraved characters are engraved so that the center intervals of the characters are constant intervals a. However, in the case of typefaces, the typeface varies from a narrow character such as “1” to a wide character such as “W”. Even if the center interval is constant, the actual character gap is not constant. It doesn't happen.

[Object of the Invention]

Therefore, an object of the present invention is to provide an automatic marking device capable of performing marking while always ensuring a constant character gap in consideration of the width of each character.

[Outline of Invention]

The features of the present invention include a type wheel in which a plurality of type faces are engraved, an engraving stage that performs a plane motion while placing an object to be engraved, a character selecting unit that selects a desired type face from the character wheel, and A pressing means for pressing the type wheel and the marking stage to mark the selected type face on the object to be marked, and a word to be marked by controlling the marking stage, the character selecting means and the pressing means. In an automatic marking device provided with a marking control means for automatically marking, rewriting is possible in which the marking control means defines an optimum character pitch for marking two typefaces side by side for all combinations of the plurality of typefaces. Character table consisting of various files and each character code corresponding to each character forming the word to be stamped Has the plural types of the engraving signal generating means for generating a marking signal inserting each character pitch code referenced from the character pitch table selected in the character pitch tables while, in the character pitch table,
The width of one of two adjacent characters is w1, the width of the other is
w2, the distance between the two characters is s, and the optimum character pitch is p
Then, the value obtained as p = (w1 + w2) / 2 + s is set, and the selection means performs character selection based on the character code and the marking stage performs planar movement based on the character pitch code. In point.

Example of Invention

The present invention will be described below based on illustrated embodiments. First
The figure is an overall configuration diagram of an automatic marking device according to the present invention. The marking machine body 10 is connected to the microcomputer 20 by an RS-232C bus. The word to be imprinted may be input from the keyboard of the microcomputer 20 or may be input from the floppy disk drive 21 connected to the microcomputer 20. For example, in the case of engraving the customer's name on a notebook and distributing it with the service, the data about the customer's name registered in the large computer is transferred to the floppy, and this is transferred to the microcomputer 20 via the floppy disk drive 21. If you enter it,
Eliminates the need to enter many customer data from the keyboard.

A feature of this apparatus is that the microcomputer 20 has a character pitch table that defines the optimum character pitch when two character faces are marked side by side for all combinations of character faces. An example of this character pitch table is shown in FIG. In this table, the characters to be imprinted this time are arranged in the vertical columns, the characters to be imprinted next are arranged in the horizontal columns, and the optimum character pitch (unit: mm) for both characters is drawn. For example, if the first character is "C" and the second character is "B",
The table shows that the optimum character pitch for both characters is 2.0 mm. Therefore, in the actual marking operation, marking is performed so that the center distance between both characters is 2.0 mm. FIG. 3 shows an example of the method of calculating the optimum character pitch. For example, consider the case where the widths of the typefaces “A”, “I”, and “W” are a, b, and c, respectively, as shown in FIG. If you stamp without opening, "A"-
The pitch between "I" is (a + b) / 2, and the pitch between "I" and "W" is (b + c) / 2. If the predetermined character spacing d is taken, the value d may be added to each. It suffices to store the optimum character pitch for the combination of all print faces thus obtained as a character pitch table. Several kinds of character pitch tables are prepared and stored as files in the microcomputer 20 so that any file can be freely selected. Also, the file can be rewritten so that it can be modified at any time.

The microcomputer 20 has a marking signal generating means for sending a marking signal to the marking machine main body 10 via the RS-232C bus. The format of this marking signal is shown in FIG. The start code 41 is a signal indicating the start of embossing, and the following print position data.
Based on 42, the XY stage moves the marking object to the printing position. After this, each character code 4 that composes the word to be stamped
3,45,47 ... are sent, but between each character code, the character pitch code 4 referenced from the character pitch table
4,46,48 ... are inserted. For example, character pitch code 44
In the character pitch table shown in FIG. 2, the character corresponding to the character code 43 is drawn from the vertical column, and the character code 45
It is the value obtained by subtracting the letter corresponding to from the horizontal column. The end code 49 is a signal indicating the end of embossing.

The marking machine body 10 receives the marking signal and performs the following marking operation. That is, the character selection pulse motor 6 that should select the typeface corresponding to the character code 43 is driven to perform character selection and embossing, and then the XY stage 3 is moved by an amount corresponding to the character pitch code 44 to advance the character. I do. The same procedure is repeated thereafter. The word imprinted in this way is as shown in FIG. 6 (b). In the marking by the conventional device, the character center interval is fixed to the interval a, but in the marking by this device, the character center interval is the reference values a to h from the character pitch table, and the character gap is always constant. Also,
Since several types of character pitch tables are prepared and each of them is composed of a rewritable file, it is possible to easily change the character spacing for constant control.

〔The invention's effect〕

As described above, according to the present invention, in the automatic marking device,
A character pitch table that defines all combinations of typefaces is prepared, and character feeding is performed based on the reference value from this table. Therefore, engraving that always maintains a certain character gap considering the width of each character. In addition to being able to perform the above, it becomes possible to easily change the character spacing controlled to be constant.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a configuration diagram of an automatic marking device according to the present invention, FIG. 2 is a diagram showing an example of a character pitch table used in the device, FIG. 3 is an explanatory diagram showing a method of calculating a character pitch, and FIG. FIG. 5 is a format diagram of a marking signal used in the automatic marking device according to the present invention, FIG. 5 is an explanatory diagram of a marking machine body generally used from the past, and FIG. 6 (a) is a diagram showing a marking result by the conventional device. FIG. 6 (b) is a diagram showing a marking result by the apparatus according to the present invention. 1 ... type wheel, 2 ... foil tape, 3 ... XY stage, 4 ... winding mechanism, 5 ... encoder, 6 ... character selection pulse motor, 7 ... X axis drive pulse motor, 8 ... ... Y
Axial drive pulse motor, 10 …… marking machine body, 20 …… microcomputer, 21 …… floppy disk drive.

Claims (1)

[Claims] 1. A type wheel having a plurality of type faces engraved thereon, an engraving stage for performing a plane movement with an object to be engraved thereon, a character selecting means for selecting a desired type face from the type wheel, and the type character. A pressing means for pressing the wheel and the marking stage to mark the selected typeface on the object to be marked, and a word to be marked automatically by controlling the marking stage, the character selecting means and the pressing means. In the automatic marking device, the marking control means defines the optimum character pitch when the two marking faces are marked side by side for all combinations of the plurality of marking faces. Character pitch table consisting of various files, and of each character code corresponding to each character that constitutes the word to be stamped And a marking signal generating means for generating a marking signal in which each character pitch code referred from the character pitch table selected from among the plurality of types of character pitch tables is inserted. The width of one of the two characters is w1, and the width of the other is w
2, the space between the two characters is s, and the optimum character pitch is p
Then, the value obtained as p = (w1 + w2) / 2 + s is set, and the selecting means performs character selection based on the character code and the marking stage performs planar movement based on the character pitch code. Characteristic automatic marking device.