KR20020016417A - Driving test method for head nozzle of ink-jet print and device for the same - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE: A head nozzle driving test apparatus of an ink jet printer and a method thereof are provided to simplify data transmission signal lines and driving elements by parallel transmitting data corresponding to each group and transmitting groups in series. CONSTITUTION: A driving tester of a head nozzle for an ink jet printer comprises an ink jet head having plural ink chambers, ink chamber electrodes, and field distortion elements changing pressure of the ink chamber; plural semiconductor switching elements connecting electrodes to a power line; and a data transmitting unit receiving each group in series and signals in parallel by grouping driving signals, and applying to semiconductor switching elements. Parallel data signals corresponding to each nozzle are decoded into data groups. Necessary data is extracted from each group, and extracted data is applied to the nozzle driving unit. The data transmitting signal line and driving elements are simplified.

Description

Driving test method for head nozzle of ink-jet print and device for the same}

The present invention relates to a data transmission method for testing the driving of an inkjet printer head, and more particularly, to form a predetermined number of groups in which a plurality of data signals corresponding to the number of nozzles of a conventional head are simultaneously transmitted in parallel and each group Is related to a head nozzle driving test method and apparatus for an inkjet printer, in which data is transmitted in parallel and each group is serially transmitted to simplify data transmission signal lines and driving elements.

Background Art A line thermal printer is conventionally known as a line printer having a plurality of recording elements arranged in a line. As shown in Fig. 1, the conventional line thermal printer includes a central processing unit (CPU) 2 constituting the main body of the control unit, a read-only memory (ROM) 3 storing program data, and the like. An interface (I / F) 4 which performs transmission / reception control with a host computer (not shown) and receives printing commands and print data from the host computer, and an image formed by developing the received print data in a bitmap form. A system bus 1 connected to an image random access memory (RAM) 5 for storing data and an ASIC 7 for supplying a voltage application signal to a driver 6 for controlling voltage application of a thermal element of a line column head. ).

The driver 6 cascades a plurality of driver ICs 6a each including a shift register 8, a latch circuit 9, an AND gate circuit 10, and a switching circuit 11, as shown in FIG. It is comprised by connecting. That is, the driver 6 is comprised by connecting many driver IC 6a so that the data output terminal DO of the driver IC 6a of the front end may be connected to the data input terminal DI of the driver IC 6a of the next stage.

The conventional thermal line printer transfers the image data read from the image RAM 5 through the ASIC 7 to the data input terminal DI of the driver 6, and sequentially moves the image data in response to the clock CK. Are stored in the shift register 8 to be made. When a series of image data is stored in the shift register 8, the data stored therein is latched by the latch circuit 9 in response to the latch signal LT.

Subsequently, the output of the logic AND of the output terminal of the latch circuit 9 and the voltage application signal FIRE are supplied from the AND circuit 10 to each switching element of the switching circuit 11 to supply a print output to selectively supply the switching element. Turn on The heat generating element performs printing of dots by selectively generating heat according to the print output.

That is, as shown in FIG. 3, each heat generating element 12 is connected in series with a switching element 13 such as an FET between + VCC and the ground terminal. The voltage application of the heat generating element 12 is controlled by setting the switching element 13 in the on state for a period of time preset by the voltage application signal F from the corresponding gate of the AND gate of the AND circuit 10. .

Fig. 4 shows the latch data and the voltage application signal FIRE and the timing of the print output used in the above operation. Fig. 5 shows the input terminal DI, clock CK, latch signal LT, latch data, voltage application signal FIRE, and print. The timing of the image data stored in the shift register 8 via the output is shown.

However, the head drive device of the line thermal printer simply controls the voltage application or the voltage application of the heat generating element.

The head drive of an inkjet printer is known in the art as the head drive of the inkjet printer has an inkjet head using piezoelectric or field distortion elements. For example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 6-286136 discloses an inkjet head composed of a column of an ink chamber having electrodes formed therein and separated by a dividing wall of a piezoelectric element (the number of ink chambers is printed one row). Corresponds to the number of vertical dots needed to do this). Each electrode of the head is connected to a drive circuit which forms a switching element which respectively operates as a charge and discharge circuit.

A very important component in the line thermal printer as described above is the head, and the printing characteristic evaluation is the most important parameter in the method of viewing the head characteristics. The drum evaluator system is particularly suitable for evaluating the characteristics of the head alone, except for mechanical specificity. Minimize the movement of the head to move the paper and print differently from the actual printer system.

Accordingly, in order to drive the heads, the nozzles of each head must be able to be switched independently. The easiest method is to match one data line one to one for each nozzle.

However, in the conventional method of matching one data line one-to-one with each nozzle as described above, the size of the switching board for driving one column of 44 nozzles is large and the width of the data signal line is widened. .

In addition, the color printer has two rows for each color (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Block), so there are eight rows, and thus eight switching boards are required.

An object of the present invention for solving the above problems relates to a data transmission method for driving an inkjet printer head, in particular, a predetermined number of existing multiple data signals corresponding to the number of nozzles of the head is transmitted only in parallel at the same time The present invention provides a method and apparatus for driving a head nozzle of an inkjet printer, which can simplify the data transmission signal line and the driving device by forming a group of the data and transmitting the data for each group in parallel and transmitting the group in series. have.

1 is a block diagram showing a circuit configuration of a conventional line thermal printer.

FIG. 2 is a circuit diagram of the driver shown in FIG.

3 is a circuit diagram of the switching circuit shown in FIG.

4 is a timing chart of latch data, data signals, and print outputs obtained by the conventional line thermal printer shown in FIG.

FIG. 5 is a timing chart illustrating an operation description of the entire circuit part of the driver shown in FIG. 2. FIG.

6 is a schematic conceptual view of a head nozzle driving test apparatus of an inkjet printer according to the present invention.

7 is a conceptual illustration for explaining the operation of the latch unit shown in FIG.

8 is an exemplary view for explaining the general operation of the head nozzle drive test apparatus of the inkjet printer according to the present invention.

9 is a diagram illustrating an actual implementation of the head nozzle driving apparatus of the inkjet printer according to the present invention.

A feature of the present invention for achieving the above object is a nozzle driving test method of an inkjet printer head composed of a plurality of nozzles, the first decoding of a parallel data signal corresponding to each nozzle to a predetermined number of data groups And a second step of sequentially receiving data decoded through the first step and extracting only necessary data from each group, and applying the data extracted in the second step to the driving means of each nozzle. It involves three steps.

Another feature of the present invention for achieving the above object is an inkjet head including a plurality of ink chambers, electrodes for each of the ink chambers arranged side by side, and an electric field distortion element for changing the pressure in the ink chamber by a distortion operation. Wow; A plurality of semiconductor switching elements connecting the electrode to a power line; And a data transmission unit which bundles a plurality of driving signals for controlling the driving of the semiconductor switching element into a predetermined number of groups, each group is input in series, and each group signal is received in parallel and applied to the corresponding semiconductor switching element. There is.

Additional features of the present invention for achieving the above object, the data transmission unit comprises: a decoding unit for dividing a parallel data signal corresponding to the semiconductor switching elements into a predetermined number of groups; And a latch unit for temporarily storing the data group output from the decoding unit and matching the matching to the semiconductor switching element located at a later stage.

The above object and various advantages of the present invention will become more apparent from the preferred embodiments of the present invention described below with reference to the accompanying drawings by those skilled in the art.

Hereinafter, exemplary embodiments of the present invention will be described with reference to the accompanying drawings.

Figure 6 is a schematic conceptual illustration of the head nozzle drive test apparatus of the inkjet printer according to the present invention, Figure 7 is a conceptual illustration for explaining the operation of the latch shown in Figure 6, Figure 8 is in accordance with the present invention FIG. 9 is an exemplary view for explaining the general operation of the head nozzle driving test apparatus of the inkjet printer, and FIG. 9 is an exemplary implementation diagram of the head nozzle driving test apparatus of the inkjet printer according to the present invention.

As a general concept, as shown in FIGS. 6 and 7, first, 16-bit * 4 data for one column is stored in the latch 120 through the buffer 110.

At this time, the latch 120 serves to appropriately distribute the respective data through the latch driving signals Latch 0 to 3 generated by the latch driver 160.

The switch 130 determines ON / OFF according to the stored 1-bit memory. Based on this, droplets are ejected from the ink head 140.

In this case, as shown in FIG. 7, the data column is sequentially transmitted to the fourth column based on the first column, and the data of each column is transmitted four times in parallel with 16 parallel data. . Therefore, 16 parallel data are transmitted 16 times sequentially.

In addition, 16 latch enable signals are obtained from a 4-bit data through a decoder, which is used to select a latch element. FIG. 7 is shown based on the first column, and FIG. 8 illustrates a latch enable state corresponding to FIG. 7. In addition, the latch 120 stores data until the next latch enable signal is input to the 1-bit memory.

Referring briefly to the operation of FIG. 8, four latch enable signals are obtained using a 2-bit decoding signal. And the dip switch (Dip S / W) can be adjusted to each of the four rows. In the end, it is a decoding circuit that allows the 4-bit signal decoding signal to be adjusted by a dip switch.

16 data are sequentially received three times through three decoded latch enable signals and stored in each latch. Thereafter, the switch 130 is turned on / off according to the corresponding data signal.

The on-operated signal causes the nozzle of the ink-jet head to apply a driving signal to eject ink. Here, the last decoding signal (fourth 16-bit data) is not used, and the last four bits are not used even in the third 16-bit data.

Therefore, it corresponds to 44 nozzles in total.

While the invention has been shown and described in connection with specific embodiments thereof, it is well known in the art that various modifications and changes can be made without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention as indicated by the claims. Anyone who owns it can easily find out.

By providing a method and apparatus for driving a head nozzle of an inkjet printer operating as described above, it is possible to solve the problems caused in the prior art of matching one data line per nozzle one to one.

Claims (3)

In the nozzle drive test method of an inkjet printer head consisting of a plurality of nozzles, A first step of decoding the one-to-one parallel data signal corresponding to each nozzle into a predetermined number of data groups; A second step of sequentially receiving data groups decoded through the first step and extracting only necessary data from each group; And And a third step of applying the data extracted in the second step to the driving means of the nozzles. An inkjet head including a plurality of ink chambers, electrodes for each of the ink chambers arranged side by side, and an electric field distortion element for changing the pressure in the ink chamber by a distortion operation; A plurality of semiconductor switching elements connecting the electrode to a power line; And A plurality of driving signals for controlling the driving of the semiconductor switching element into a predetermined number of groups, each group being input in series, and each group signal being input in parallel and including a data transmission unit for applying to the corresponding semiconductor switching element. A head nozzle drive test apparatus for an ink jet printer. The method of claim 2, The data transfer unit may include a decoder configured to divide parallel data signals corresponding to the semiconductor switching devices into a predetermined number of groups; And a latch unit for temporarily storing the data group output from the decoding unit and matching the matching to the semiconductor switching element located at a rear end thereof.