JPS5842474A - Thermal printer - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To greatly increase the speed of printing by providing a heating mechanism to preheat a heat-sensitive recording material immediately before recording to a thermal printer in which recording is made by a heat-sensitive recording head. CONSTITUTION:A heating portion 25 for printing is formed on the base plate 24 of a recording head, and also a preheating portion 26 is formed in the frontal portion of the moving direction of the head. An electric current is flowed in the heating portion 26 in advance to raise the temperature of the insulating base plate 24 and a heat-sensitive paper. By raising the temperature of the heat-sensitive paper to a temperature just before coloring in particular, the printing speed is changed from the conventional speed of 2ms to 0.5ms. Particularly, in the case of a transfer type heat-sensitive recording method in which a transfer film is put between a thermal head and an ordinary paper and printing is made, remarkable effect is obtained. Also, a dotted heating portion 31 for preheating corresponding to the heating portion 30 for printing is provided, and selectively preheated, and thereby the loss of energy can be lessened.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION The present invention relates to a thermal printer in which a thermal recording material is heated in advance and then recorded by a thermal recording head.

Thermasive 11-tont method - The Joule heat generated by passing a pulsed current through a heat-generating resistor is transferred to thermal recording paper to perform color recording, or the thermal ink is converted into heat and printed on plain paper. This is for transcription and recording.

The thermal printer system has many advantages such as a simple mechanism, high reliability, low cost, and low noise. It has been applied in a wide range of fields up to 11-inch computers, and is becoming indispensable in the information processing field, including for the Aximi 1J and peripherals of personal computers.

Various types of thermal recording paper have been proposed, and they are also considered promising as image recording methods such as multicolor recording, chronograph recording, and gradation recording. In particular, the thermal transfer method solves the problem of storage stability, which was considered to be a drawback of the conventional thermal transfer method, and improves the printing product trade by E1.
11, and future developments are expected.

No. - Malprint method's life-giving fever r (-antibody, 2
- That is, the thermal head ° is a thin film type, ((p, Jjf7
There are ＋ method, semiconductor method, etc., but 9 [5
The superiority of the elimination method has been proven. In order to explain a thin film thermal head, an example of the electrical current is shown in FIG.

FIG. 1 is a cross-sectional view of a thin film thermal head.

Glass gel 1 that forms a smooth surface on a P-edge substrate 1 made of alumina, etc.
A layer 2 of 40 to 60 μm thick is coated on the soil, and a heating resistor film 3 made of TcL2N or the like is formed on the soil. Furthermore, on top of that is A for supplying power to the heat generating part 4.
The electrodes 5 such as u are patterned and IA. The upper surface of the surface I has an acid retention layer 6 of approximately 2μ771. Furthermore, a wear-resistant layer 7 is formed to a thickness of about 1 () μm.

Normally, the oxidation-resistant insulation layer 6 is sio□, and the wear-resistant layer 7 is Ta2.
05 are each formed by a sputtering method.

FIG. 1 shows an example of a thin film thermal head, and various improvements have been made to the structure, shape, material, etc. in order to achieve higher performance.

Figure 2 shows an example of a structure for improving print quality.A valve is placed on an insulating substrate 7 made of aluminum or the like, and a nose layer 9 is applied only to the portion corresponding to the lower part of the heating section 8. It forms a good contact with the thermal paper and transfers heat to the thermal paper more efficiently.
Improves printing quality. The structure of the upper part of the partial glaze layer 9 is the same as the example shown in FIG. electric 4f
11. A monoxide hu-retaining layer 12 and a wear-resistant layer 13 are formed and patterned.

Cholera (r-Malburi soters) have different heating element arrangements and butter rings depending on their use.

It:r single-horizontal dot type heads are used in facsimile machines, live IJ printers, and the like. Kotq, Ir;1
Tots are arranged perpendicularly to the feeding direction. A printer that prints alphanumeric characters, kanji, katakana, etc., uses a dot-type printer in which the dots are lined up in a vertical line in the same direction as the paper feed direction. In addition, dot matrix type heads, seven segment type heads, etc. are used for tuturers.

FIG. 3 shows an example of a horizontal single row dot type head. A large number of heat generating parts 15 are formed on the insulating substrate 14 in a direction perpendicular to the paper feeding direction indicated by the arrow. An electrode 16 for supplying current 4- to the heat generating portion 15 is formed, and a wire terminal 17 for connection to an external circuit is formed at the end of the insulating substrate 14.

In some cases, it is also possible to improve printing quality by forming a partial glaze layer 18 as shown by the dotted line d.

FIG. 4 shows an example of a vertical dot type head. A large number of heat generating parts 20 are formed on an insulating substrate 19 in parallel to the paper feeding direction indicated by the arrow. This is usually 7 dots. An electrode 21 for supplying current to the heat generating part 2o is formed, and a connection terminal 2 for connecting to an external circuit is formed at the end of the insulating substrate 19.
2 is formed. In one case, attempts have been made to improve the print quality by forming a 2:3 partial grease layer as shown by the dotted line.

Printers that use thermal heads have many advantages, but the only drawback is that the printing speed is somewhat slow.The printing speed of printers that use electrostatic recording, inkjet, etc. is in μS. However, in the case of a thermal head, the unit is m8. This is inconvenient when it is necessary to print as much information as possible on a unit time of 11 yen, such as a facsimile machine.

The present invention improves these drawbacks and significantly increases printing speed. The details of the present invention will be described below.

The reason why the printing speed is slow in conventional thermal printers is that the thermal energy from the heat-generating part of the thermal head is used to color the thermal paper. The time constant of the heat capacity is the cause of slowing down the printing speed.The present invention converts the heat energy consumed for purposes other than printing into another type of heat. The present invention will be described below with reference to embodiments.

FIG. 5 is a diagram illustrating an embodiment of the present invention.

Although the basic structure is the same as the vertically single dot type head described above, a similar structure is possible with a horizontally single dot type head, and the present invention is applicable not only to thin film type heads but also to thick film type heads.

A heating section 5 for printing is formed on the insulating substrate 6-b. Another preheating heating section 26 is formed at the front in the direction of movement of the head. The heating section 26 is provided with an electrode 27 for supplying current independently of the heating section 25.As shown by the dotted line in the figure, both the heating section 25 and the heating section 26 are connected to the partial glaze layer 4. If it is formed in the soil, you can see the quality of the print.

A current is applied to the heat generating part 26 in advance (particularly when the iP
Leave the surroundings of the related group (24) and the heat-sensitive group,
Conventionally, the printed renka is 27'n, and those with heat sensitivity of 8 to 10 are 0.5.
It became below rn, s. The head according to the present invention was particularly effective in the case of a transfer thermal method in which printing is performed by sandwiching a transfer film between a thermal head and plain paper.

In the embodiment shown in Section 5 and 1, the heating part for printing is in the form of a dot, and even in the case of a dot, there is a large loss of energy because of the rod-shaped heating element which performs heating in front of it. FIG. 26 shows an example of a structure in which the heating section of the dots is heated only in front of the heating section.A heating section 30 for printing is provided on an insulating substrate 29. A dot-shaped preheating heat generating section 31 is provided in front of the head in the moving direction so as to correspond to the printing heat generating section 30. The heat generating part 31 is provided with an ilt 32 for independently generating heat. If both the heat generating part 301 and the heat generating part 3J are formed on the partial glaze layer 33 as shown by dotted lines in the figure, the printing quality will be very poor.

This structure caused a small amount of energy loss (but printing was performed with high efficiency).

FIG. 7 shows a method of supplying power to the printing heat generating section and the preheating heat generating section of these heads. 7th 1 is a diagram showing the situation of pulse application to the heat generating part. A indicates a pulse of the heat generating section for preheating, and B indicates a pulse of the heat generating section for printing. There is a significant time interval between the pulse of the heating section for preheating and the pulse of the heating section for printing. The distance between the heating part for preheating and the heating part for printing [
If 1 is W and the thermal movement speed is a, then
It is shown by the relationship t=Wa.

As described in detail above, the present invention has completed the development of a high-speed thermal printer, and there is a prospect that small, low-cost printers will become widespread throughout history. Low construction ll leggy high speed 8] cave is now possible.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS FIG. 1 is a cross-sectional view of a thin film thermal head. FIG. 2 is a diagram showing a partially glazed thin film thermal head. FIG. 3 is a diagram showing an example of a +18-row dot type head. FIG. 4 is a diagram showing an example of a vertical single-row dot type head. The fifth part 1 is a diagram showing an embodiment of the present invention σ). 6th
The figure shows an embodiment of the present invention. FIG. 7 is a diagram showing the nose driving the present invention. 1. ・Glass glaze layer 3.
Heat generating resistor layer 4... Heat generating part 5... 1b゛, pole 6... Oxidation resistant retention layer 7...
・Front wear layer 8・・Insulating substrate 9・・Partial glaze layer 】( )・・Heating resistor film 11・・Electrode
12 fists, 1 oxidation protective layer 13 caps, cap layer
]4... Insulating substrate 15... Heat generating part 16...
Electrode 9-17... Connection terminal 18... Partial glue layer 1
9... Insulating substrate 2)... Heat generating part 21... Electrode
22... Connection terminal... Partial glue layer
24... Insulation --: 叛5... Heat generating part for printing... Heat generating part for preheating 27 - ・Electrode U・
・Partial group I nose layer 29・・Insulating substrate 30・・
Printing heat generating part 31, fist preheating heat generating part 32, -electrode 3
3. Partial Glaze Layer 2 Applicant Suwa Seikosha Co., Ltd. Agent Patent Attorney 1 - Task 10

Claims (1)

[Claims] Ill A thermal recording head is used to record characters, figures, etc. on a thermal recording material. A thermal recording head is used to record characters, figures, etc. on a thermal recording material. 12) In the Thermasive 11 printer that uses a thermal recording head to record characters, figures, etc. on a thermal recording material, the relative movement with the thermal recording material on the thermal recording head. A thermal printer whose motive is that a heating resistor and electrodes for heating are installed in the front part of the circuit.