JPS59138484A - Printer - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To easily detect a breakage of a flat cable and prevent complicated troubles from being generated, by a method wherein both edge wires of a flat cable are connected on a carrier, and conduction between the both edge wires is checked by a circuit part, in a serial printer. CONSTITUTION:The wires 10, 11 extending at both edges of the flat cable 3 are used for detecting a breakage of the flat cable 3. Namely, the wire 10 is connected, for example, to +5V through a resistance, while the wire 11 is connected to the ground level. In general, breakage due to bending fatigue of the flat cable occurs sequentially from an edge part. Accordingly, breakage of the flat cable 3 can be detected by utilizing a signal at a position A before a trouble occurs in the actions of the printer. Therefore, by stopping reception of subsequent data or by a treatment such as feeding a checking signal to a host device, troubles such as misprinting or losing of data can be prevented from occurring.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION The present invention relates to a serial printer equipped with a print head and in which a carrier prints while reciprocating from side to side.

Due to the nature of serial printers, printing is achieved by moving the print head section relative to the print medium. Of this relative movement, lateral movement was seen in the past, where the printing medium was moved, but this type of movement spatially
Because of the large space requirements, most printers now move the print head. In this case, it is of course necessary to supply energy to the print head for various operations within the print head, and in many cases, electrical signals are supplied.

For this reason, wiring is required from the circuit section of the device to the moving stone printing head. For example, a plurality of wires may be bundled and guarded with a coil spring, or Techniques such as using flat cables and flexible packages have been realized. Among these, flat cables are often used due to their cost and ease of handling.

If this conventional method of running a 7-rat cable is used, the flat cable will naturally be subject to 9-way bends, which may lead to breakage. In order to avoid this disconnection, consideration has been given to the diameter and material of the trench, but this naturally requires a fairly large safety factor. In addition, when a disconnection occurs, the continuity does not suddenly disappear after a certain point, but depending on the location of the carrier part, the state of continuity that has been lost may not be changed, so the failure that occurs in the device will not occur. , it may be difficult to inspect, or it may not be reproduced during fault diagnosis, which is difficult to handle.

Therefore, it is an object of the present invention to provide a serial printer that can easily detect the disconnection of the flat cable and that does not cause complicated failures.

That is, by connecting the wires on both edges of the flat cable on the carrier and checking the continuity between the wires on both edges in the circuit section, the flat cable can be disconnected! We solve the aforementioned problems by introducing il.

FIG. 1 is a perspective view of an apparatus according to one embodiment of the present invention, in which a carrier 2 reciprocates in the direction of the arrow with respect to the apparatus main body 1. One end of the flat cable 3 is connected to the carrier 2 via a connector 4, and the other end is connected to a package 6 attached to the device body 1 via a connector 5.

A wire rod 10 passing through one edge of the flat cable 3, and
The wire 11 passing through the other green is used for detecting disconnection of the 72-way cable as described later. The wires of the flat cable 3 other than those mentioned above are used to drive the ribbon feed motor, type selection motor, hammer, etc. on the carrier, and as signal wires for the ribbon end switch, home position detection switch, etc. Referring to FIG. 2, the wires 10 and 11 of the flat cable 3 are directly connected outside the connector 4 (ie, on the carrier 2). The connector 5 side is connected to the package and the wire 10 is connected to +5V via a resistor 13.

Further, the wire 11 is connected to the ground level.

By doing this, if there is a break in the wire rod 10 or 11 of the flat cable 3 at A,
If +5■ (H) is not generated, an output of 0■ (L) is output.

Generally, disconnection of a flat cable due to bending fatigue occurs sequentially starting from either edge of the flat cable. Therefore, if you use the signal at A above, flat cable 3
It is possible to detect a disconnection before it causes a problem in the operation of the device. For example, a lamp is turned on by the above signal A,
Or, by placing the entire device in an error state and stopping accepting data from other sources, or by sending a check signal to the host device, problems such as printing errors or data loss may occur. can be prevented.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

FIG. 1 is a perspective view of an embodiment of the present invention, and FIG. 2 is a wiring diagram of the embodiment of the present invention. 1...Device body, 2...Carrier, 3
...Flat cable, 4,5...Connector, 6...Package, 10.11...
...Wire, 13...Resistance. 5-

Claims (1)

[Claims] In a printing device in which a print head is mounted on a carrier and the carrier reciprocates left and right along a platen, the wires on both sides of a flat cable that transmits electrical signals to the print part carrier are connected on the carrier, respectively, and the circuit part is connected. A printing device characterized in that a disconnection of a shift flat cable is detected by checking continuity between wires on both edges of the cable.