JPS6259506B2 - - Google Patents

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION The present invention relates to a recording device that scans a light irradiation member with a plurality of light beams.

A recording device that scans a recording medium (light irradiation member) with a single light beam (for example, a laser beam) modulated by a recording signal and records information based on the recording signal on the recording medium is well known. This is where I am.

In a recording apparatus that uses one light beam in this manner, in order to increase the recording speed, it is sufficient to increase the scanning speed of the light beam.

However, in order to record on a recording medium, it is usually necessary to irradiate a certain amount of light or more, and there is also a limit to the driving speed of the deflection means for scanning the light beam, so it is difficult to increase the scanning speed. There are limits.

In particular, when recording is performed by irradiating a heat mode recording medium with a laser beam obtained from a semiconductor laser beam generator whose output is generally low, the recording speed has to be extremely slow.

In order to compensate for this drawback, for example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 1983-1980 proposed scanning a recording medium using multiple light beams.
No. 24130, the applicant presented.

As another example of such a scanning device using a plurality of light beams, a device as shown in FIG. 1 can be exemplified.

That is, the laser beams 12 emitted from the semiconductor laser generators 11-1 to 11-4 arranged apart from each other
-1 to 12-4 are focused by lenses 13-1 to 13-4 to form fiber glasses 14-1 to 14-4.
to be introduced.

Such fiber glasses are arranged in a straight line at their output ends, and the laser beam emitted from this output end is collimated by a collimator lens 15 and then introduced into a deflector 16 consisting of a rotating reflector, where it is deflected. The laser beam is focused by a condenser lens 17 and focused onto a recording medium 18.

As shown in FIG. If it is perpendicular to the direction (direction of movement of the beam on the recording medium) l-l', the recording spot 21 recorded on the recording medium will be as shown in FIG. 2B, depending on the type of recording medium. (where F is the scanning direction of the light beam), and an unrecorded portion is formed between the recording spots 21.

This unrecorded portion is formed because the recording medium has a threshold level.

To explain in more detail with reference to FIG. 3, the intensity distribution of a focused laser beam is generally as shown by a curve 31 in FIG. 3A, with the intensity increasing toward the center and decreasing toward the periphery.

Therefore, as shown in FIG. 3B, the sheet-like base material 3
In the case of a recording medium 33 in which a recording layer 34 is vapor-deposited on top of the recording layer 34 and removed by irradiating the recording layer with a beam, the recording layer 34 is formed with a diameter equal to the diameter a of the condensing spot.
Instead, only the area irradiated with a beam having an intensity equal to or higher than the threshold level S is removed as shown in Figure B.

An object of the present invention is to provide a recording device that can irradiate a light irradiation member with a plurality of beams without waiting time.

In particular, it is an object of the present invention to provide a recording apparatus that can immediately continue to perform the next plurality of scans even after the plurality of scans by the plurality of beams are completed.

That is, the present invention includes a plurality of light beam generators 68a to 68d that irradiate a plurality of light beams modulated by a recording signal onto a light irradiation member, and a device that scans the plurality of light beams irradiated onto the light irradiation member. In the recording apparatus, the recording apparatus has a scanning means 69 for independently modulating the plurality of light beams, and a number of modulation means 66a to 66d for independently modulating the plurality of light beams, each of which is provided in a number greater than the number of the plurality of light beams, and each of which modulates one line of the recording signal. A plurality of storage means 55a to 55 capable of storing minutes
c, 56a to 56d, storing sequentially input recording signals in the plurality of storage means, and writing in the plurality of storage means for each scan by the scanning means;
Control means 53, 58, 5 for controlling read operation
9, 60, and 63, and the plurality of light beams irradiated onto the light irradiation member are arranged so that adjacent ones are oblique to the scanning direction of the light beam, and Provided is a recording device characterized in that the timing of transmitting a recording signal to the modulation means is delayed by a predetermined time, thereby delaying the modulation start timing of one of the adjacent light beams by a predetermined time with respect to the modulation start timing of the other light beam. It is something.

Examples of the present invention will be described in detail below.

4A to 4C show the arrangement of the condensing spots 40, 42, 43 formed by the recording apparatus of this embodiment, and as is clear from these figures, in this embodiment, the scanning direction l-l ′, straight lines a-a′, b-b′, c that connect adjacent light-converging spots
-c', d-d', f-f', and g-g' are arranged so as to be non-parallel to the line L-L' which is perpendicular to the scanning direction.

With this arrangement, recording can be performed without forming unrecorded areas between recording spots.

That is, for example, as shown in FIG.
If 0 is arranged, recording spots 41-1 to 41-4 as shown in FIG. 4D can be obtained, and no unrecorded portion is formed between the recording spots.

500Å on 75μ thick polyester film
A heat mode recording medium formed with a stack of Bi and 500 Å GeS as a recording layer has an energy sensitivity of 10 ⁶ erg/cm ²
high sensitivity as a heat mode recording medium,
It is a sensitive material with high resolution.

Such a sensitive material is exposed to a beam of 6μφ from a semiconductor laser.
Under conditions where the light is focused on a spot and an average energy density of 10 ⁶ erg/cm ² is achieved,
A hole of 3.2μφ was formed.

Therefore, in this case, when the condensing spots 51 and 52 are arranged as shown in FIG.
By setting the angle θ formed by the straight line n-n' connecting the centers of 1 and 52 to approximately 58° or more, the light converging spot 5
There is no gap between the recording spots formed by the numbers 1 and 52.

In accordance with the above example, if we describe Fig. 4 in more detail, in Fig. 4, the angle formed by the straight line connecting the centers of adjacent light focusing spots and the straight line L-L' perpendicular to the scanning direction is If the angle θ (θ>0) or is greater than θ, no gap will be created between the recording spots.

In order to obtain such a condensing spot, for example, the output ends of the fiberglass 14 in FIG. 1 may be arranged in the same manner as the converging spots shown in FIGS. 4A, B, and C.

When performing such scanning, a modulation signal to the laser beam must be applied at a timing corresponding to the deviation of the focal spot.

The control circuit of a scanning device having condensing spots arranged as shown in FIG. 4A will be described below as an embodiment.

Image information from a reading unit (not shown) or
Receives graphic character information from a computer, etc.
The operation of the apparatus shown in this embodiment until desired recording is obtained will be explained with reference to FIGS. 6 and 7.
The image information from the reading unit or the information from the computer is inputted in a predetermined format to the interface circuit (not shown) of this device, either directly or via a recording medium such as a magnetic tape, and is input to the terminal 50 of this device. is applied in the form shown in FIG. 7A. Unless otherwise specified, the signal applied to the terminal 50 will be described limited to image information that is a time-series signal (serial). The image information as shown in FIG. 7A applied to the terminal 50 is synchronized with the line synchronization signal as shown in FIG. 7B applied to the terminal 51 and the picture elements of the image information applied to the terminal 54. Under the control of the buffer switch control circuit 53, each line is sent through the buffer switch 52 under the control of the buffer switch control circuit 53, and is then transferred to a shift register or the like having a number of bits equal to the number of picture elements for one scan line of image information. The signal is sequentially input from the first line buffer 55a to the line buffers 55b and 55c.

That is, as shown in FIG. 7C, D, and E, image information
_L1 is stored in the first line buffer, _L2 in the second line buffer, and _L3 in the third line buffer.

After inputting the image information to the third line buffer 55c, the image information of the next scan line is stored in a random access memory (hereinafter referred to as
The write counter 5 is placed in the RAM 56d in the fourth column of the group 56 (abbreviated as RAM).
9. According to the contents of the address decoder 58, as shown in FIG.
It is input and accumulated at the timing shown in . At the same time, the buffer switches 57a, 57b, 5 controlled by the buffer switch control circuit 53
7c, the contents of the first line buffer 55a are transferred to the corresponding first column of RAM 56a, and also to the second and third line buffers 55a, 5.
The contents of 5b are input and stored in the corresponding RAMs 56b and 56c in the second and third columns, respectively. That is, by the time the fourth scan image information is input to the RAM 56d in the fourth column, the image information of the first, second, and third scans have been input to the RAM 56d.
This means that image information for four scans is stored in the RAM group 56.
After the image information for four scans has been stored in the RAM group 56, the read/write and logic control circuit 6
0 causes the line buffers 55a, 55b, and 55c to receive the next image information, and also sends a synchronization signal as shown in FIG. 7G to the scanner mirror driver 61. When the next image information starts to be input to the first line buffer 55a, the clock signal is frequency-divided by the 1/4 counter 62 by the read/write and logic control circuit 60, and based on the frequency-divided clock signal, and According to the contents of the read counter 63 and address counter 58, four lines of image information are simultaneously transferred from the RAM group 56 to the seventh line from the RAM group 56 at a cycle of 1/4 counter 62.
It is read out as shown in Figure H.

In this way, when reading from RAM at 1/4 the writing speed, the following information is written to the line buffer, but the 4th part of the next image information is written to the line buffer.
When writing a scan, there are two states: reading from the RAM 56d and writing the next image information to the RAM 56d, or the state where the same address of the RAM 56d is read and written at the same time is the last picture element part of the image information. It is. That is, RAM
While reading the last bit of 56d with the 1/4 clock signal, the next bit must be written to the end of the fourth column of information.

Therefore, in this embodiment, a delay circuit 64, such as a one-shot multi-channel circuit, is inserted before the write counter 59 to delay the clock signal so that reading and writing are not performed at the same time.

According to the above description, serial image information is converted to parallel (multiline) image information, and the RAM 5 is
The image information read from 6 is sent to the next stage delay circuit 65.
a, 65b, and 65c. The delay amount of the delay circuits 65a, 65b, 65c is the same as that of the fourth column.
An amount corresponding to the mechanical dimension is given so that the recorded image of the optical spot array shown in FIG. 4 is in a direction orthogonal to the scanning direction based on the image information in the RAM 56d.
For example, in FIG. 4A, if the time required for the condensing spot to move to the position corresponding to the adjacent spot position is τ, the delay time of the delay circuit 65a is 3τ, the delay time of the delay circuit 65b is 2τ, and the delay time of the delay circuit 65b is 2τ, and the delay time of the delay circuit 65b is 2τ.
The delay time of is set to τ.

Delay circuits 65a, 65b, 65c and RAM
The output of 56d is sent to modulators 66a, 66b, 66c,
66d and the image information is applied to the laser diode 6
Pulse widths and repetition periods suitable for pulse operations 8a, 68b, 68c, and 68d are provided. The modulated image information is sent to a laser diode driver 67.
The voltage is applied to laser diodes 68a, 68b, 68c, and 68d via the laser diodes 68a, 67b, 67c, and 67d, thereby controlling the light emission of the laser diodes.

The laser beam from the laser diode 68 is deflected by a scanner mirror 69 whose one period is four writing periods as shown in FIG.
It is possible to record two scanning lines at the same time, taking four times as long as writing.

Moreover, as mentioned above, since the condensing spots are configured to be non-perpendicular to the scanning direction, there is no gap between the recording spots formed by the plurality of converging spots, resulting in extremely high quality recording. It is possible to do this.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

Fig. 1 is a schematic diagram showing the scanning device, Fig. 2A is a front view showing the condensing spot arrangement, Fig. 2B is a front view showing the recording spot arrangement, and Fig. 3A is an energy distribution diagram of the condensing spot. , FIG. 3B is a cross-sectional view showing the recording trace formed on the recording medium by the condensing spot, and FIGS. 4 and 5 are front views showing the condensing spot and recording spot arrangement by the scanning device of this embodiment. , FIG. 6 is a control circuit diagram of the scanning device according to the present invention, and FIG. 7 is a waveform diagram showing signal waveforms of various parts of the circuit shown in FIG. 6.

Claims (1)

[Scope of Claims] 1. A plurality of light beam generators that irradiate a plurality of light beams modulated by recording signals onto a light irradiation member, and scan the plurality of light beams irradiated onto the light irradiation member. a recording device having a scanning means, a modulation means for independently modulating each of the plurality of light beams, and a modulation means provided in greater number than the number of the plurality of light beams, each capable of storing one line of a recording signal; comprising a plurality of storage means and a control means for storing sequentially input recording signals in the plurality of storage means and controlling writing and reading operations of the plurality of storage means for each scan by the scanning means; Adjacent ones of the plurality of light beams irradiated onto the light irradiation member are arranged obliquely with respect to the scanning direction of the light beams, and the timing of sending recording signals from the storage means to the modulation means is set. A recording apparatus characterized in that the modulation start timing of one of the adjacent light beams is delayed by a predetermined period of time by a predetermined period of time.