JPS60109866A - Portable printer - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To permit the printing of normal and slanted letters by providing a mechanism to send a thermal ink ribbon by moving the thermal recording head while pressing it on a printing medium and a mechanism to regulate the rotation angle of the thermal recording head. CONSTITUTION:When a printing is pressed on a printing medium and moved, a recording head 20 is pressed by a press spring 24, a ribbon-sending roller 29 is also pressed and turned, and a thermal ink ribbon 25 is passed through the ribbon-pressing roller 30 and sent out to the right direction. The thermal recording head 20 is driven synchronously with the signals of a pulse generation ring 11 and printing is made. When the head 20 is turned only through a given angle by a head turning regulating dial 15, a heating element array arranged vertically is inclined to the moving direction, and the slanted letters are printed.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION [Field of Application of the Invention] The present invention relates to a printing device for printing on an object such as a character symbol, and particularly to a printing method in which the substrate remains stationary and the printing device moves. Regarding equipment.

[Background of the invention]

Conventionally, many printing devices (hereinafter referred to as printers) have had means for holding and moving a printing material (often a sheet of paper) within the printer. Therefore, when designing a printer, it is necessary to make some assumptions about the shape and size of the printing material, and most of them are paper of a specified size, making it difficult to print on postcards, envelopes, etc. It was sometimes impossible to print on thick materials such as bound books.

Also, in order to change the character font, it was necessary to change the character 7 on) 1-.

[Purpose of the invention]

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION An object of the present invention is to provide a printer that prints on a stationary printing material by pushing and moving the printer, and is capable of printing regular and italic characters.

[Summary of the invention]

The printing method of the present invention is based on the printing principle of the already known thermal transfer method, and by making use of the characteristics of the same method to construct a small and lightweight printer, it is possible to press the printer against the printing material and print. The nozzle was moved by the user by hand, and italicized characters could be printed by rotating the thermal recording head by a specific angle.

[Embodiments of the invention]

Hereinafter, one embodiment of the present invention will be described with reference to the drawings.

FIG. 1 is an external view of a printer according to the present invention.

This printer 1 is connected to a computer (not shown) through a cable 2, and receives encoded characters and symbols to be printed from the computer and prints them. The printer is provided with a display section 3 that shows the user the reception status and the status of the printer itself, and a switch section 4 for the purpose of requesting a retransmission of the printing code from the chemical calculator, initializing the printer's own status, etc. However, I will not go into details here.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram of the internal circuit of this printer.

The interface circuit 5 functions to receive character codes from an external computer, etc., and to communicate the status of the printer to all computers. However, the character code storage circuit 6 is a circuit that stores received character codes. The character pattern storage circuit 7 is a circuit that records the form of the character symbol to be printed as a set of 5×7 points. The head drive circuit 8 drives a thermal recording head 9 to print all character shapes.
The rotation detection circuit 10, which is a circuit that supplies current to the printing material, detects when the printer is held in a position where it can print on the printing material and is moved to print, and when the rotation of the pulse generation wheel 11, which will be explained after the movement, is performed. and transmits it to the overall control circuit 12, which will be described next. The overall control circuit 12 detects the timing to print the character code received from the computer and stored in the character code storage circuit 6 based on the movement signal transmitted from the rotation detection circuit 10, and detects the timing to print the character code stored in the character code storage circuit 6. It controls the entire printer so that it is converted into a character pattern and transmitted to the head drive circuit 8 for printing. The overall control circuit 12 also displays the status of the printer on the character display tube 3 of the display section 13, and sends a user's reset signal from the switch section 14. Do the work of receiving.

FIGS. 3 and 4 show the structure of the heat-sensitive recording portion of this embodiment. As is well known, the recording head 20 has a heating resistor and a conductor for supplying all the current to the heating resistor formed on a substrate.The conductor is led out of the recording head 20 by a flexible electric wire 21. It is. The flexible conductor is connected to the head drive circuit 8 of FIG. The storage head is glued to a head holder 22'.

The head holder 22' and the head rotation angle adjustment disc A35 are integrated and are pressed against the head rotation angle adjustment disc B36 by a spring 34. Head rotation adjustment dial 1
The shaft 5 is the head holder 22' and the head rotation angle adjustment disc A.
35, and only the rotation of the head rotation adjustment dial 15 is transmitted.

The thermal recording head 20 is rotated by a predetermined angle by turning the head rotation adjustment dial 15. However, only the thermal recording head 20 rotates, and the roller rotation system such as ribbon feeding is not affected at all. , head holding section 22
is pressed by the head suppression spring 24 while fitting into the groove of the head guide 23.

When printing, the printer presses the head section against the printing material. By pressing the printer against the printing material, the recording head 20 is pressed against the printing material by the force of the pressing spring 24. The constant and length of the suppression spring 24 are set so that when the upper and lower ends of the head guide 23 come into contact with the printing material, the pressure spring 24 presses the head with a predetermined force. The thermal ink ribbon 25 is wound around a spool 26.
The ribbon coming out from the spool is held between a brake block 27 and a brake spring 28 so that it does not come out too much from the spool. The ribbon passes between the ribbon feed roller and the ribbon presser roller 30 while winding around the ribbon feed row 229 through the front of the recording head, and is led out of the printer.

When the printer is pressed against the printing material and moved to the upper left in FIG. 3, the ribbon feed roller is also pressed against the printing material and rotates. The ribbon holding roller is pressed against the ribbon feeding roller by a spring (not shown), so
The ribbon is fed to the right as the printer moves. Its moving speed is equal to the moving speed of the printer itself. The ribbon feed roller rotates due to friction with the printing material as the printer moves, so in order to generate sufficient frictional force, the ribbon feed roller is made with a diameter that deforms slightly when the printer is pressed against it, and its material is Preferably, it is made of a soft material such as rubber.

On the other hand, a gear 31 is attached to the cylinder feed row 2, and the rotation of the roller is transmitted to the pulse generation wheel 11. The pulse generation wheel is a gear made of a magnetic material, and a rotation detection element 32 is provided near its periphery.

The detection element detects the movement of the teeth of a pulse generation wheel such as a Hall element, and changes in its characteristics are transmitted to the pulse generation circuit shown in Fig. 2, which determines the rotational speed of the pulse generation wheel, that is, the moving speed of the printer. This information is transmitted to the overall control circuit.

Fig. 5 shows the principle of the printing section of the printer of this embodiment? show. The recording head 20 is pressed against a printing material 33 via a heat-sensitive ink ribbon. The recording head moves to the right as the user moves the printer. The amount of movement is @
It is detected by the pulse generation wheel shown in Figure 3. When the amount of movement reaches one dot row, the overall control circuit prints the character code 2 to be printed.
It is converted into a character pattern by a character pattern storage circuit.

A predetermined dot of the heating resistor of the recording head is heated by transmitting the character pattern to the next dot row to be printed to the head drive circuit. When the heat-sensitive ribbon at the position corresponding to the force j dot is heated, the colorant is dissolved or sublimated, and the colorant adheres to the printing material. When the print head reaches the next dot position due to movement of the printer, it is detected by the rotation of the pulse generation wheel. The overall control circuit controls printing of the character pattern of the next dot row of the same character or the first dot row of the next character to be printed.

FIG. 6 shows printing with the thermal recording head 20 rotated by a predetermined angle. Similar to the original shown in FIG. 5, a dot string of characters is printed according to the amount of movement of the printer. However, since the head is rotating, the dots are printed at positions shifted from the original dot positions, resulting in italic characters.

According to this embodiment, a hand-held printer is constructed that records clear dots at a predetermined pitch by pressing the print head against the printing material with a predetermined pressure and moving the printer, and by rotating the thermal recording head, Heavy and several italic characters can be printed for one character pattern.

In this embodiment, the heat-sensitive recording head is rotated by a dial, but it is also possible to rotate the head holder by using a knob.

〔Effect of the invention〕

According to the present invention, by the user holding it in his/her hand and moving it by pressing it against the printing material, using the printing principle of the °C% thermal transfer method, clear characters and symbols can all be printed, and the thermal recording head can also be moved. By rotating by a predetermined angle, it is possible to print the full text and several types of italic characters for one type of character butter / (character font).

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

8I'i Figure 1 is an external perspective view of a printer that is an embodiment of the present invention, Figure 2 is a block diagram of its internal control circuit,
Fig. 3 is a perspective view showing the entire structure around the print head, Fig. 4 is a vertical sectional view of the rotation angle adjustment mechanism of the print head, Fig. 5 is a perspective view showing the principle of printing by thermal recording method, and Fig. 6 is a perspective view showing the entire structure around the print head. This is a perspective view showing the principle of italic character printing according to the present invention.

Claims (1)

[Claims] 1. Character code between external computers, etc.? Interface circuit for receiving or transmitting the status of the printer to the computer, character code storage circuit, character pattern storage circuit, thermal recording head for printing all character shapes, circuit for passing current through the thermal recording head, detecting the amount of movement of the printer In this printer, the thermal ink ribbon is fed in accordance with the amount of movement of the printer by pressing the thermal recording head against the object to be printed and moving it. A hand-held printer, comprising: a mechanism for adjusting the rotation angle of the thermal recording head.