JPH10324036A - Thermal printer for plate-like medium - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To print with uniform density by suppressing density unevenness in a thermal printer for a plate-like medium such as a card to print a character on the medium. SOLUTION: A thermal head 37 is inclined at its upper side by deviating it to a platen roller 32 side so that the head 37 supported at one side in a lengthwise direction to a head angle 39 and formed at its upper side as a free end is dealt with a deflection generated by a pressure received at the time of printing. Thus, a uniform printing pressure can be given by a reaction force of an elastic deformation due to the deflection in the lengthwise direction of the head 37.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a plate-type medium thermal printer for printing characters and figures on a plate-like medium such as a card or a tag.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art Conventionally, a thermal printer of a plate-like medium for printing characters and figures on a card-type print medium such as a card or a tag has been disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2-500965.
Printing devices for plastic cards such as those described in US Pat. According to the present invention, a plastic card is transported and printed with a printing surface of a plate-shaped medium being vertical.

Further, the present application has proposed a printer as shown in FIG. 2 in order to reduce the size of such a thermal printer of a plate-shaped medium. In this plate-shaped medium thermal printer, one card is transported by a feeding roller 6 to a transporting unit including a transporting belt 9 and pinch rollers 13 and 14 from a storage unit 3 that stores a plurality of cards with the printing surface of the card vertical. The paper is supplied, printed by a printing means including a thermal head 37, an ink ribbon cassette 38, and a platen roller 32 provided in a transport path of the transport means, and further discharged to a discharge side receiving section 45 downstream of the transport means. And a word processor including a keyboard 50 and a liquid crystal display 51.

In order to reduce the size, the length of the conveying path is reduced as much as possible in the width direction.
Instead of reducing the amount of ink ribbon and reducing the dimensions,
We respond by making the ink ribbon cassette easy to replace,
In addition, a print thermal head that is movably supported,
The method of attaching the pinch roller corresponds to a simplified configuration in which only the lower part is supported by the moving member.

[0005]

However, since the width of a plate-like medium such as a card is relatively large in most cases exceeding 30 mm, the length of the thermal head itself is also increased, and only the lower side has a cantilever structure. In this case, when the thermal head is pressed against the card during printing, the upper side of the thermal head is bent, and the printing pressure applied to the upper side of the card is weakened.

In particular, since the surface of a plate-shaped printing medium such as a card is smooth and hard as compared with a medium such as plain paper, the printing density is greatly affected by the strength of the printing pressure. It was printed thinner than the side.

[0007]

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION In order to solve the above-mentioned problems, the present invention is directed to supporting a thermal head having one of its longitudinal directions supported by a moving member and the other having a free end corresponding to a deflection caused by a pressure applied during printing. In this case, the other side of the thermal head is inclined toward the platen roller. By inclining the thermal head, a uniform printing pressure can be applied in the longitudinal direction of the thermal head by the reaction force of the elastic deformation due to the bending.

[0008]

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS A plate-shaped medium thermal printer according to the present invention comprises a platen roller provided in a transfer path by a transfer means for transferring the plate-shaped medium to the next step, and a direction in which the platen roller comes into contact with and separates from the platen roller. A plate-shaped medium comprising: a thermal head provided on a movable member movable in the longitudinal direction and one provided in the longitudinal direction and the other as a free end; and ink ribbon supply means for supplying an ink ribbon between the thermal head and a platen roller. In thermal printers,
The other end of the free end of the thermal head is inclined toward the platen roller.

Further, the thermal head may be provided in a thermal printer of a plate-like medium which transports the plate-like medium by vertically setting a conveying means, a platen roller, and a thermal head so that the printing surface of the plate-like medium is vertical. It is effective.

The ink ribbon supply means can be appropriately provided because the moving mechanism of the thermal head is simple, but it is preferable to use an ink ribbon cassette.

It is preferable that the length of the platen roller is substantially equal to the length of the thermal head, and that the diameter of both ends is larger than that of the center portion in order to adapt to printing of a plate-like medium having a plurality of widths.

With the above configuration, when the thermal head moves at the time of printing and comes into contact with the plate-shaped medium, the other side of the thermal head is a free end, so that the thermal head is elastically deformed so as to be bent. A uniform printing pressure can be applied in the longitudinal direction of the thermal head by the force.

[0013]

An embodiment of the present invention will be described with reference to the drawings. 1 is an enlarged plan view of the vicinity of a printing area of the tag printer, FIG. 2 is a plan view of the tag printer, FIG. 3 is a view showing a tag printed by the present embodiment, FIG. 4 is a side sectional view of the printing area, and FIG. FIG. 3 is a schematic plan view of a printing area.

To explain the outline of the configuration of the printing apparatus, an accommodation section 3 for accommodating a plurality of plastic tags 2 shown in FIG. The accommodation section 3 is movable in the front-rear direction in FIG.
A pressing plate 4 urged toward the side wall 3a on the near side of the drawing, and a regulating plate 5 that is provided to be movable in the left-right direction in the figure and regulates the rear ends of tags of different lengths. A plurality of tags 2 are accommodated with their recording surfaces 201 set upright and the recording surfaces are overlapped in the front-back direction in the figure. The accommodation section 3 has a configuration in which the upper part is opened to facilitate mounting of the tag 2.

The feed roller 6 is provided on the left side of the side wall 3a of the storage section 3 in the figure in a position in contact with the tag 2 stored in the storage section 3, and is a roller having a substantially half-moon cross section. , And feeds the tag 2 on the front side of the storage section 3 to the printing area, which is the next step on the left side in the figure, in a direction orthogonal to the arrangement direction of the storage sections 3.

The side wall plate 8 is provided on the side wall 3a of the housing portion 3 so as to be movable in the front-rear direction in the drawing so as to face the pressing plate 4, and together with pinch rollers 10 and 11 described later, the switching means 2 described later.
By the operation of 5, the tag and the other plate-shaped medium are moved in accordance with the thickness. FIG. 1 shows a state in which a tag having a small thickness is accommodated, and at this time, the side wall plate 8 protrudes from the side wall 3 a of the accommodation portion 3.

The transport belt 9 has two rollers 10, 11
And a tension roller 12, which is rotated by the drive of the motor 7, and is rotated by two pinch rollers 13, 14.
At the same time, the tag 2 is conveyed in the left direction in the figure with its recording surface 201 vertical.

The pinch roller 13 on the right side in FIG. 1 is rotatably provided on a shaft 21a provided upright at an end of a swinging rod 21 provided rotatably with respect to the shaft of the roller 11. The swinging rod 21 is urged toward the roller 10 by an unillustrated urging means for urging the swinging rod 21 backward in the drawing. The surface of the pinch roller 13 is covered with an adhesive rubber such as silicone or urethane having an adhesive property.
It is a cleaner to remove dust on the printed surface of the tag before printing.

The pinch roller 14 on the left in FIG. 1 is rotatable with respect to the axis of the roller 10 and above the end of a swinging rod 23 provided to intersect the swinging rod 21 described above. The swinging rod 23
Is urged toward the roller 11 by urging means (not shown) that urges the roller rearward in the drawing.

The switching means 25 is rotatably provided substantially at the center of the inside of the conveyor belt 9 and rotates when it is rotated to correspond to the thickness of a plate-like medium such as a tag to be conveyed. The position of the side wall plate 8 and the positions of the pinch rollers 13 and 14 are moved through such a mechanism.

The platen 32 has its surface elastically covered with rubber such as EPDM. As shown in FIG.
The length is made substantially equal to the width of the conveyor belt, and a groove 32a for guiding the protrusion 9a of the conveyor belt 9 is provided at a substantially central portion thereof,
An annular projection 32b having a diameter larger than the center at its upper and lower ends,
32c, and is provided so as to be rotatable about a shaft 33 provided substantially at the center of the rollers 10 and 11 and to be in contact with the inside of the conveyor belt 9. Further, as shown in FIG. 5, the position of the platen 32 is slightly biased toward the thermal head, which will be described later, on the near side of the rollers 10 and 11 in the figure.

The printing means uses a thermal transfer system comprising a thermal head 37 and an ink ribbon cassette 38 (ink ribbon). The thermal head 37 faces the platen 32 with the transport belt 9 therebetween as shown in FIG. So that it is provided substantially at the center of the head angle 39,
The head angle 39 has one end portion 39a connected to the feeding roller 6
And the other end 39b is urged to contact the cam 40 by a spring means (not shown).
When the cam 40 is rotated by the drive of the motor 41, the thermal head 37 moves in the direction of contacting and separating from the platen 32.

Further, as shown in FIG.
The lower part 7 is provided integrally with the head angle 39, the upper part is a free end, and is slightly deviated in the direction of the platen 32 with respect to the lower part.

The head angle 39 and the swinging rod 21 of the pinch roller 13 are connected by a connecting rod 42, and the swinging rod 21 is linked to the swing of the head angle 39 by the connecting rod 42. When the thermal head 37 is separated from the platen 32 without printing as shown in FIG. 1, the pinch roller 13 is separated from the transport belt 9 (roller 10).

A discharge roller 43 is provided downstream of the conveyor belt 9.
The tag 2 conveyed by the conveyance belt 9 and the pinch roller 14 is sent out to the next storage section 45 after printing.

In the storage portion 45, the tag 2 discharged from the discharge roller 43 and the pinch roller 44 is kept vertically, and the newly discharged tag 2 is in front of the tag 2 already discharged. In order to align to come to the side,
A pair of pressing plates 46 and an alignment plate 47 are provided. In addition, in order to make it easy to take out the tag 2 after printing, the housing portion 45 is configured to open upward.

A display means 51 such as a well-known liquid crystal display or the like for displaying character data, a format, a length, and an instruction for an operator inputted from a keyboard 50 described later is provided on the front side of the housing section 45. I have.

The keyboard 50 is provided further on the front side of the display means 51, the ink ribbon 38, and the feeding roller 6, and inputs print data such as character data, data on the number of lines, and the length of a plate-shaped medium. Things.

Next, the operation of printing on the tag 2 will be described. First, when the user inputs print data such as predetermined characters and tag lengths and formats, and then instructs the user to start recording, the motor 7 rotates and the feed roller 6 is driven in conjunction with this. Rotates, and one of the tags 2 housed in the housing section 3 with its print surface vertical is conveyed to the left in FIG. 2 in a direction substantially orthogonal to the arrangement direction.

With the movement of the tag 2 by the feed roller 6,
The motor 41 starts, the cam 40 rotates, the head angle 39 swings, and the thermal head 37 and the pinch roller 13 move toward the transport belt 9.

The timing of driving the motor 41 for rotating the cam 40 is controlled by a CPU (not shown), and the tip of the tag 2 conveyed by the feed roller 6 is moved between the roller 10 and the pinch roller 13. When the intermediate time is reached, the motor 41 is started so that the leading end of the card 2 is sandwiched between the pinch roller 13 and the roller 10, and the motor 41 is stopped before the thermal head 37 is still close to the transport belt 9. . Thereby, sufficient driving and cleaning of the printing surface can be performed from the tip of the tag 2, and the thermal head 37 is not damaged.

Next, the tag 2 is transported to the printing area by the rotation of the transport belt 9, and subsequently, the motor 41 is started again by the control of the CPU (not shown) and the leading end of the tag 2 as described above. Is moved to the thermal head 37, the thermal head 37 moves, and the platen 3
2 sandwiches the tip of tag 2.

FIG. 6 is a side sectional view of a printing area during printing.
And the state of the platen roller 32 will be described. First, when the head angle 39 moves to the left in the figure as the tag 2 is fed, the ink ribbon 38 is moved from above the thermal head 37.
Is sandwiched between them and comes into contact with the tag 2. When the head angle 39 further moves, the thermal head 37 can abut on the entire vertical direction of the flexure tag 2. further,
A uniform printing pressure can be obtained in the vertical direction by the reaction force generated by this bending, and printing without density unevenness can be performed.

At this time, the platen roller 32 is elastically deformed by the pressure of the thermal head 37,
In particular, the upper and lower ends are most greatly deformed, but the deformation is corrected by the annular projections 32b and 32c, and a flat state is obtained.

Subsequently, as the thermal head 37 comes into contact with the print surface of the tag 2, predetermined print data is supplied to the thermal head 37, and predetermined characters and symbols are printed on the print surface of the tag 2.

After the predetermined printing, the motor 41 is activated based on the input tag length and the cam 40 is started.
Rotates in the reverse direction, the head angle 39 swings in the opposite direction, and the thermal head 37 is moved before the rear end of the tag 2 passes.
, And the pinch roller 13 also moves to a position away from the roller 10.

The tag 2 on which characters and the like are printed is further transported leftward in the figure by the transport belt 9 and the pinch roller 14, and subsequently discharged to the storage section 45 by the discharge roller 43 and the pinch roller 44. The tag 2 discharged into the storage portion 45 is placed in a state where its printing surface is made vertical by a pressing plate 46 and an alignment plate 47 provided in the storage portion 45 from the near side in the front-rear direction in the drawing. They are arranged in a direction substantially perpendicular to the transport direction.

FIG. 7 shows a state in which plate media having different widths and different sizes are printed. The relationship between the thermal head 37, the tag 2, and the platen roller 32 in this state will be described. When the head angle 39 moves to the left in the figure with the feeding of the tag 2, the upper end of the tag 2 and the substantially center of the thermal head 37 sandwich the ink ribbon 38 therebetween. When the head angle 39 moves further, the lower end of the tag 2 comes into contact with the thermal head 37.

At this time, since no force is applied to the upper side of the thermal head 37, the amount of deflection of the thermal head is
Although the thermal head 37 remains tilted less than when printing a wide tag, the tag itself is also tilted obliquely because the upper and lower ends of the platen roller are thicker than the center, so that the thermal head 37 and the tag 2 are inclined. The contact can be made in the entire vertical direction, and printing without density unevenness can be performed.

In this embodiment, a tag is used as a plate-like medium. However, the present invention is not limited to this, and a plate-like medium such as a card or a display plate such as a nameplate whose length is long in the width direction is used. The medium also includes a medium, and the material is not limited to plastic, but may be metal, paper, or the like.

FIG. 8 shows a case where the shape of the platen roller is an inverted crown shape in which the upper and lower ends are thicker than the center, and the platen roller 55 also has a short width. The thermal head 37 can be brought into contact with the tag 2 in the entire vertical direction, and printing without density unevenness can be performed.

[0042]

According to the present invention, the thermal head is supported by moving one side in the longitudinal direction to the moving member and tilting the other side of the thermal head provided as a free end while biasing the other side toward the platen roller. It is possible to correct the amount of deflection of the thermal head when pressed against a card type print medium,
In addition, a uniform printing pressure can be applied in the longitudinal direction of the thermal head by the reaction force of the elastic deformation due to the bending, and the printing density can be made uniform.

Also, by transporting the plate-shaped medium with the printing surface of the plate upright, or by using an ink ribbon cassette,
It is possible to provide a thermal printer of a plate-like medium which is excellent in miniaturization of the apparatus and excellent maintainability.

Further, the platen roller has a total length substantially equal to the length of the thermal head, and the diameter of both ends thereof is larger than that of the center portion. Can be done.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is an enlarged plan view of the vicinity of a printing area of a tag printer.

FIG. 2 is a plan view of the tag printer.

FIG. 3 is a view showing a tag printed according to the embodiment.

FIG. 4 is a side sectional view of a printing area.

FIG. 5 is a schematic plan view of a printing area.

FIG. 6 is a side sectional view of a printing area during printing.

FIG. 7 is a side cross-sectional view of a print area when printing plate-shaped media having different widths.

FIG. 8 is a side cross-sectional view of a print area during printing in another embodiment.

[Explanation of symbols]

 1 Tag Printer 2 Tag 3 Housing 6 Feeding Roller 7 Motor 9 Conveying Belt 10 Roller 11 Roller 12 Tension Roller 13 Pinch Roller 14 Pinch Roller 32 Platen 37 Thermal Head 38 Ink Ribbon 39 Head Angle 40 Cam 41 Motor 45 Housing 50 Keyboard 51 display means

 ──────────────────────────────────────────────────続 き Continuing on the front page (72) Inventor Atsunobu Takatsuka 1-11-2 Kyobashi, Chuo-ku, Tokyo Inside Japan Taiplier Co., Ltd. (72) Ryuuji Mizuuchi 1-11-2 Kyobashi, Chuo-ku, Tokyo No. Within Japan Thailand Writer Co., Ltd.

Claims (4)

[Claims] 1. A platen roller provided in a transport path by a transport means for transporting a plate-shaped medium to a next step, and a moving member movable in a direction of coming and going with respect to the platen roller. In a plate-shaped medium thermal printer including a thermal head supported and the other end provided as a free end, and an ink ribbon supply means for supplying an ink ribbon between the thermal head and a platen roller, the other side of the free end of the thermal head A plate-like medium thermal printer characterized in that the sheet is inclined toward the platen roller. 2. A thermal printer for a plate-like medium, wherein the transport means, the platen roller, and the thermal head are vertically erected, and the plate-like medium is transported with the printing surface of the plate-like medium being vertical. . 3. The thermal printer according to claim 1, wherein said ink ribbon supply means is an ink ribbon cassette detachable from a machine base. A platen roller provided vertically so as to be in contact with the inside of the conveyor belt, 4. The platen roller according to claim 1, wherein
A thermal printer for a plate-shaped medium, wherein the entire length of the thermal head is substantially equal to the length of the thermal head, and the diameter of both ends thereof is larger than that of the central portion.