JPH0781124A - Printing control method for thermal head - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To provide a favorable printing even with a printing pattern of which the printing dot diameter is small and becomes blurred, or of which the printing becomes unstable, when a high precision thermal head is applied to a heat transfer printer, and peripheral dots are not printed such as a point of 1 dot or a vertical line, etc. CONSTITUTION:As soon as an energy is applied to a heating element 1 which performs a printing, the peripheral printing pattern is referred, and when the heating quantity is not sufficient, the energy is auxiliarily applied to adjoining heating elements 2, 3 as well. Also, The input energy quantity to the adjoining heating elements 2, 3 is adjusted in such a manner that the temperature of the adjoining heating elements 2, 3 may becomes lower than that of the heating element 1 which performs the printing.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a printing method in a fusion type thermal transfer recording apparatus, and more particularly to a printing control method for a thermal head.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art An ink film coated with hot-melt ink is placed on a recording paper, and the heating element of a thermal head that is in close contact with the side of the ink film not coated with ink is heated to record the ink on the ink film. In a thermal transfer printer that performs melt transfer on paper and performs printing, in order to perform printing, pay attention to the heating element to which energy is applied and refer to the adjacent dots of this heating element or the printing pattern on the previous line. Was there. For print patterns where the temperature of the ink layer on the ink film is expected to rise excessively due to heat transfer or heat storage, the print density is adjusted by reducing the energy applied to the heating element, and a constant print is applied to all print patterns. Thermal history control was performed so that quality could be obtained.

[0003]

However, in the conventional thermal history control method in which the print density is adjusted by adjusting the applied energy, when the size of the heating element of the thermal head becomes smaller as the resolution is improved, the dot size of 1 dot is reduced. When surrounding dots do not print, such as vertical lines and vertical lines, there is a problem that the printing is blurred and printing cannot be performed with sufficient quality. Such a phenomenon was remarkable when the surface roughness of recording paper such as rough paper was large.

An object of the present invention is to solve such a problem and to obtain sufficient print quality and perform high-definition recording even when surrounding dots such as a dot or a vertical line are not printed. It is to provide a print control method for a thermal head.

[0005]

According to the present invention, an ink film having a hot-melt ink applied on a film is arranged on a recording paper, and a heating element of a thermal head which is brought into close contact with a side other than the ink application surface of the ink film is heated. Thus, in the print control method of the thermal head of the thermal transfer printer device that melt-transfers the ink on the ink film to the recording paper and performs printing, a print pattern is formed depending on whether or not the heating element around the heating element to be heated is heated. It is characterized by being classified into several types, and heating a heating element that performs printing and an adjacent heating element that does not perform printing for a specific type of printing pattern among the printing patterns.

[0006]

[Function] As the size of the heating element of the thermal head becomes smaller, if the surrounding dots are not printed such as the printing of one dot dot or vertical line, the printing becomes thin and the cause of fading is the heating element shape due to the improvement of resolution. As the melted area of the ink layer on the ink film becomes smaller, the adhesion between the recording paper and the melted ink layer becomes insufficient,
This is probably because the molten ink layer cannot be transferred to the recording paper side.

In the print control method of the thermal head of the present invention, in the case of a print pattern such as a dot of one dot or a vertical line which easily causes a print blur, energy is also applied to a heating element adjacent to a heating element to be printed. By doing so, the temperature distribution of the ink layer is broadened, and the print dot diameter can be increased. Therefore, it becomes possible to print a dot or a vertical line with sufficient quality.

Here, the amount of energy applied to the adjacent heating element is set so that the 1-dot printing does not become equivalent to the 2 dots or 3 dots printed side by side so that the temperature of the adjacent heating element prints. Adjust so that it is lower than the heating element.

[0009]

Embodiments of the present invention will now be described with reference to the drawings.

FIG. 1 shows a first embodiment of the present invention.
It is a conceptual diagram which shows the printing pattern and temperature distribution of the heating element which prints the vertical line of a dot. In FIG. 1, the first line shows the heat generation pattern in the previous line, the center line shows the heat generation pattern in the current line, and the third line shows the heat generation pattern in the next line.

The thermal melting type transfer recording device used in the experiment is 3
A thermal head of 00 dpi is installed. Regarding the size of the heating element of the thermal head, the width of the heating element in the pitch direction was 85 μm, and the length of the recording paper in the running direction was 140 μm. For the printing pattern of FIG. 1, 0.4 mj of energy is applied to the heating element 1 for printing, and 0.12 mj of energy is applied to the adjacent heating elements 2 and 3 to print a vertical line of 1 dot. I went. Recycled paper was used as the recording paper. As a result, the line width is about 100 μm
It was possible to print high-quality vertical lines with a certain width.

The print quality of this embodiment will be compared with the print quality of the conventional method. FIG. 5 is a conceptual diagram showing a print pattern and a temperature distribution of a heating element for printing a vertical line of 1 dot without applying energy to an adjacent heating element according to the conventional method. The energy applied to the heating element 1 is equal to the sum of the applied energy according to the first embodiment of FIG. 1, and is set to 0.64 mj.
As a result, the vertical width was narrower than that of the first embodiment shown in FIG. 1, the line width variation was as large as 40 μm to 80 μm, and only vertical lines of insufficient print quality with a lot of blurring were obtained.

FIG. 2 shows a second embodiment of the present invention.
It is a conceptual diagram which shows the printing pattern and temperature distribution of the heat generating element which prints the dot point. As in the first embodiment, 0.4 mj of energy was applied to the heating element 1 for printing, and 0.12 mj of energy was applied to the adjacent heating elements 2 and 3 for printing.
As a result, it was confirmed that high-quality dots can be printed.

FIG. 3 shows a third embodiment of the present invention.
It is a conceptual diagram which shows the printing pattern and temperature distribution of the heating element which prints the diagonal line comprised by a dot. As in the first embodiment, 0.4 mj of energy was applied to the heating element 1 for printing, and 0.12 mj of energy was applied to the adjacent heating elements 2 and 3 for printing. As a result, it was confirmed that high-quality diagonal lines can be printed.

FIG. 4 shows a fourth embodiment of the present invention.
It is a conceptual diagram which shows the printing pattern of the heating element which prints the vertical line of the striped pattern for every dot line. In this case, 0.4 mj of energy was applied to each of the heating elements 1, 4 and 5, and printing was performed without applying energy to the adjacent heating elements 2 and 3 and heating elements 6 and 7. As a result, it was confirmed that high-quality vertical stripe pattern printing was possible.

Next, similarly to the first, second, and third embodiments of the present invention, printing is performed by applying 0.12 mj to the adjacent heating elements 2 and 3 and heating elements 6 and 7, respectively. (Not shown). As a result, solid black printing was obtained over the entire surface instead of vertical stripes.

The fourth embodiment is a print pattern in which the 1-dot vertical line print pattern of the first embodiment is repeated for each dot. In such a print pattern, adjacent heat generation that does not originally perform printing. The body is also heated to a high temperature by heat conduction from a heating element that performs printing. Therefore, it was confirmed that it is not necessary to apply energy to the adjacent heating element in an auxiliary manner.

[0018]

As described above, the thermal transfer recording apparatus and method of the present invention can be applied to the adjacent heating element even in the case of a printing pattern in which peripheral pixels such as a 1 dot vertical line pattern and 1 dot point are not printed. There is an effect that high-quality printing with constant density can be realized without blurring by inputting auxiliary energy to the.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a conceptual diagram showing a 1-dot vertical line printing pattern and a temperature distribution as a first embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a conceptual diagram showing a print pattern and a temperature distribution of dots of 1 dot as a second embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 3 is a conceptual diagram showing a shaded print pattern composed of one dot and a temperature distribution as a third embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 4 is a conceptual diagram showing a print pattern of vertical lines of striped patterns every other dot line and a temperature distribution as a fourth embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 5 is a conceptual diagram showing a print pattern of a conventional example.

[Explanation of symbols]

 1, 4, 5, 6, 7 Heating element 2,3 Adjacent heating element

Claims (3)

[Claims] 1. An ink on the ink film is prepared by arranging an ink film, which is obtained by applying a hot-melt ink on a film, on a recording paper, and heating a heating element of a thermal head that is in close contact with a side of the ink film that is not the ink application surface. In the print control method of the thermal head of the thermal transfer printer device that melt-transfers to the recording paper and performs printing, the print patterns are classified into several types depending on whether the surrounding heating element of the heating element to be heated is heated, Among these, a print control method for a thermal head, characterized in that a heating element that performs printing and an adjacent heating element that does not perform printing are heated for a specific type of printing pattern. 2. The print control method for a thermal head according to claim 1, wherein the amount of energy applied to the adjacent heating element is lower than the amount of energy applied to the heating element for printing. 3. The specific type of print pattern includes a 1-dot vertical line print pattern, a 1-dot dot print pattern,
2. A print control method for a thermal head according to claim 1, wherein the print pattern is a diagonal line print pattern composed of one dot.