US3669237A - Double helical printer - Google Patents

Double helical printer Download PDF

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Publication number
US3669237A
US3669237A US34437A US3669237DA US3669237A US 3669237 A US3669237 A US 3669237A US 34437 A US34437 A US 34437A US 3669237D A US3669237D A US 3669237DA US 3669237 A US3669237 A US 3669237A
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United States
Prior art keywords
printer
rotatable wheel
character
characters
wheel
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Legal status (The legal status is an assumption and is not a legal conclusion. Google has not performed a legal analysis and makes no representation as to the accuracy of the status listed.)
Expired - Lifetime
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US34437A
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English (en)
Inventor
Robert L Wagner
Evan L Ragland
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American Regitel Corp
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American Regitel Corp
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Publication date
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    • B—PERFORMING OPERATIONS; TRANSPORTING
    • B41—PRINTING; LINING MACHINES; TYPEWRITERS; STAMPS
    • B41J—TYPEWRITERS; SELECTIVE PRINTING MECHANISMS, i.e. MECHANISMS PRINTING OTHERWISE THAN FROM A FORME; CORRECTION OF TYPOGRAPHICAL ERRORS
    • B41J1/00—Typewriters or selective printing mechanisms characterised by the mounting, arrangement or disposition of the types or dies
    • B41J1/22—Typewriters or selective printing mechanisms characterised by the mounting, arrangement or disposition of the types or dies with types or dies mounted on carriers rotatable for selection
    • B41J1/32—Typewriters or selective printing mechanisms characterised by the mounting, arrangement or disposition of the types or dies with types or dies mounted on carriers rotatable for selection the plane of the type or die face being parallel to the axis of rotation, e.g. with type on the periphery of cylindrical carriers
    • B41J1/34—Carriers rotating during impression

Definitions

  • the present invention is directed to a printing device and particularly to a helical type of printer.
  • Helical printers normally consist of a print wheel having a helical path of characters thereon along with a juxtaposed hammer for bringing the print medium into contact with a type character.
  • a larger diameter wheel necessitates a higher rotational speed to provide the same printing rate as a smaller diameter wheel. This reduces the amount of the time the hammer has to hit the character.
  • a printer comprising a rotatable device having type elements each having a predetermined and identical character position width for printing various characters on an object.
  • the elements are located on the rotatable device in at least two separate helical paths the paths being offset from one another.
  • Means are provided for rotating the device on its axis one revolution while traversing along its axis a character position width.
  • Means are also provided for selectively bringing the type elements into contact with the object to be printed.
  • FIG. I is a plan view of a printer embodying the present invention.
  • FIG. 2 is a cross-sectional view taken along the line 22 of FIG. 1;
  • FIG. 3 is a cross-sectional view taken along the line 3-3 of FIG. 1;
  • FIG. 4 is a cross-sectional view taken along the line 4--4 of FIG. 1;
  • FIG. 5 is an enlarged cross-sectional view taken along the line 55 of FIG. 1;
  • FIG. 6 is an enlarged view of a portion of FIG. 4 substantially taken along the line 66 with some structure omitted;
  • FIG. 7 is a pulse train useful in understanding the invention.
  • FIG. 8 is an example of the printing format of the present invention.
  • FIG. 9 is an enlarged folded-out representation of the printing wheel of the present invention which has been distorted in scale
  • FIG. 10 is a plan view of a typical character on the printing wheel
  • FIG. 11 is a block diagram illustrating the operation of the invention.
  • FIG. I2 is a detailed block diagram of a portion of FIG. 11.
  • the printer of the present invention includes a rotatable printing wheel 11 having type elements for printing various characters on it which is mounted for rotation on a shaft 12 which is carried by a carriage 13.
  • Carriage 13 is slidably mounted or journaled on rod 14 to allow wheel 11 to be moved transversely along its axis 12.
  • Rod 14 is cantilevered from the side frame I6.
  • An eccentrically shaped rod 17 is mounted for rotation in frame 16 and also extends through carriage 13. The rotation of rod 17 around its center 17 moves carriage l3 and its associated printing wheel 11 up and away from a roller 18 which is permeated with printing ink which is mounted for rotation on frame 16.
  • Eccentric rod 17 is rotated by means of a solenoid unit 19 mounted on frame 16 which is coupled to rod 17 by levers 21 and 22 (see FIG. 5).
  • Carriage 13 also is slidable along eccentric rod 17.
  • a hammer 23 with its associated actuator unit 24 which is slidably mounted on a rod 26 cantilevered from frame 16.
  • the hammer actuator unit 24 also includes a U-shaped bottom segment 27 which moves along a cantilevered shaft 28.
  • FIGS. 3 and 4 The driving means for moving the hammer and its actuating unit in unison along with the wheel 11 and its carriage 13 are best shown in FIGS. 3 and 4 respectively.
  • a studded driving wheel 31 moves a perforated metal band 32 which is also passed around idler rollers 33 and 34 and is affixed to the actuator unit 24 for moving the hammer 23.
  • FIG. 1 where the band 32 is affixed by screws 36 and 37.
  • An electric motor 41 has an output drive shaft 42 which through belt 43 drives double pulley 44. This is coupled through a belt 46 to a drive pulley 47 of ink roller 18. Since roller 18 is normally in contact with printing wheel 11, its speed of rotation is therefore related to the rotary speed of the printing wheel 11.
  • Shaft 48 of double pulley 44 as best shown in FIG. 2 provides the drive for the transverse movement of hammer 23 and wheel 11 and also stores energy in a spring 59 for the carriage return movement of the elements 11 and 23.
  • Shaft 48 has its speed reduced by a spur gear arrangement generally shown at 49 having an output on a shaft 51 which is coupled to a clutch 52.
  • the output shaft of clutch 52 is coupled to studded wheels 31 and 39 to drive the actuator unit 24 and the carriage 13 of the wheel 11 in a direction, referring to FIG. 1, from right to left.
  • spring 59 is loaded or wound.
  • the clutch 52 Upon reaching the left-most position the clutch 52 is released to allow for rapid return of both hammer and wheel to the start print position which is the right-hand position.
  • suitable damping (not shown) is provided for the carriage return movement suitable damping (not shown) is provided.
  • a suitable printing medium such as paper is provided by a paper roll 53 mounted on a shaft 54 which is cantilevered from frame 16.
  • the upper 53 extends around guides 56 and 57 and then between hammer 23 and wheel 11. It is indexed by suitable line indexing means (not shown).
  • a code cup wheel 58 with peripheral notches or slots 59 is mounted for rotation with wheel 11.
  • Arrow 61 shows the direction of rotation.
  • One slot 59 which is deeper than the remaining slots is for the purpose of providing an index pulse and the remaining slots provide what is termed clock pulses.
  • Mounted in the carriage unit 13 are photodetectors along with suitable juxtaposed light sources which in FIG. 6 are designed PCI and PC2.
  • Photodetector PC2 is located axially inward in relation to the axis of the code cup 58 so that it is activated once per revolution.
  • Photodetector PCI is positioned to be activated with the passage of every slot. This is illustrated in FIG. 7 where in the case where there are 44 characters 44 slots are provided.
  • PC2 is located in a leading space phase relationship with PC I in a physical sense to provide an electrical phase lead of 180 as shown in FIG. 7. This provides for simplified logic circuitry.
  • FIG. 9 is a greatly expanded and somewhat distorted view of wheel 11 which indicates the character or symbol sequence and the associated circumferential sequence which have been given the decimal numbers 1 through 44. In addition, there is the reference level and the 90, 180 and 270 points are shown.
  • each character has a predetermined and identical character width 64 which in the preferred embodiment is 0.100 inches.
  • the other dimensions of the particular character are also shown in FIG. 10.
  • Wheel 11 has a side A and a side B and its directions of rotation and transverse movement are illustrated by the arrows 66.
  • pitches of helical paths 62 and 63 are identical being equal to the character position width 64 divided by the total number of characters on the wheel which in this case is 44.
  • the pitch is in effect the distance indicated as 67 between the center lines of adjacent characters which is 0.100 divided by 44 or 0.0228 inches.
  • the velocity of traverse movement of wheel 11 is proportional to the pitch of the helical paths 62 and 63. For example, assume that it is desired to print 40 characters per second. Wheel 11 must therefore have a rotational speed of 40 revolutions per second. With a desired character width of 10.100 inches, 10 characters per inch must therefore be printed. Thus, the traverse velocity is equal to the quotient of the number of characters per second to be printed, which is 40, to the number of characters per inch which is 10, or four inches per second. Pitch is therefore related to the character width which is an integral factor in the speed oftraverse.
  • the characters of path 62 are of the alphabetical (alpha) type and of path 63 of the numeric type. This division is convenient from two aspects. First, the official ASCII code is divided into so-called alpha sticks and separate numeric sticks. In other words, a separate three digit binary code is used to differentiate alpha from numeric characters. Secondly, in the actual printing format, as especially used in the present invention, alpha and numeric characters are not normally intermixed.
  • Helical path 62 is offset from helical path 63 by the distance designated 68 which is the difference between the center line of the first character, A, of path 62 and the center line of the last character, 8, of the numeric helical path 63. In the present invention it has been found that this offset ideally is 0.041 inches. This offset distance 68 in the final analysis determines the spacing as illustrated in FIG. 8 between the printed alpha and numeric characters.
  • the top line of alpha characters 69 illustrates the character position width which, since it is used to determine the pitch, determines both the total space of each character position and in addition the distance between the center lines of the characters, for example, F and G.
  • Print line 71 which has all numeric characters shows their center line shifted from those of the alpha characters; however, the character position width of all characters is identical.
  • Print line 72 aptly illustrates the spacing caused by the helical path offset 68 of the printing wheel 11.
  • the space between the two characters position widths is equal to 0.041 inches or the actual offset distance 68.
  • the spacing is 0.059 which is the difference between the character position width and the actual offset 68. The reason for this is that because of the shift from the alpha to numeric an extra rotation of the wheel must be used to prevent overlapping the numeric with the alpha. In contrast, when proceeding from a numeric to an alpha character no extra wheel rotation or so-called skip of a revolution is necessary.
  • the offset 68 of 0.04l inches which is somewhat less than one-half the character position width has been chosen for esthetic reasons. In other words, it was decided when going from a numeric field to an alpha field to reduce that spacing somewhat and allow the alpha to numeric spacing to be larger. It is apparent that if exactly one-half a character width or 0.050 inches were used the spacing would be identical. In fact from a practical standpoint, the offset distance may be varied substantially 50 percent from one-half the character position width. This will allow good readability for the printout and yet prevent character overlap. The exact technique of skipping one revolution will be shown in conjunction with the discussion of FIGS. 1 1 and 12.
  • a communications line indicated at 73 provides the printing of information in the standard ASCII code.
  • a communications register 74 receives this information from the communications line and decodes any control code such as line feed (LF), carriage return (CR), start of message (SOM) and end of transmission (EOT) as best illustrated in block 75 to enable the printer to act on these commands as a message format.
  • the remainder of the codes are transferred into a one line buffer unit 76.
  • An encoder 77 converts the ASCII code into a straight binary code. This binary code is preloaded into the print register 78 in response to a printer load command 79 from encoder 77.
  • Each binary code for a particular character corresponds to the decimal circumferential sequence on wheel 1 1.
  • the encoder is set up for the particular printing wheel with which it is used.
  • the printer load command occurs during an index pulse illustrated in FIG. 7.
  • the print register is preset to the binary number which coincides with the position of the character on the print wheel. This then is counted down to 0 by clock pulses (FIG. 7) from the space generator 81 and print control unit 82, produced by the slotted code cup of the printing wheel. When the countdown reaches zero, driver unit 83 is activated to fire the printing mechanism or the hammer indicated at 84.
  • the ready busy block 86 is a circuit to show the condition of the printer; specifically, whether or not it is ready to receive information or alternatively it is busy or in the act of printing or some other operation.
  • the clock and character frame block 87 is a communications clock to provide the necessary format for receiving a code from the communications line and entering it into the one line buffer 76.
  • One line buffer 76 is an MOS type 256 shift bit register.
  • the oscillator and character frame unit 88 is both a clock and character framing circuit to determine whether there is any information in the buffer and if there is when the next character is to be operated on by the printer and how to locate it. Except for the space generator 81 which will now be discussed in FIG. 12, the blocks of FIG. 11 are essentially old in the art.
  • Space generator 81 as shown in greater detail in FIG. 12 is coupled to print control unit 82 which produces both index pulses and clock pulses on the lines so indicated to encoder 77 and to a counter 78' which is a substantial portion of the print register 78.
  • the purpose of the space generator is twofold. First, it remembers the last character printed and determines whether or not the next character will be in a different helical path or field and if so whether there is a change in the alpha field to the numeric field or vice versa. Secondly, if there is a change from the alpha to the numeric field (see FIG. 8, from the M to the 5) the space generator will automatically generate a space or skip a print operation for one rotation of the printing wheel. This produces the type of space between the alpha and numeric as shown in FIG. 8.
  • the above is accomplished by inhibiting the countdown operation of the counter 78' during a change from an alpha to numeric character.
  • a change is sensed by the lack of an alpha indication on one of the two inputs 91, 92 to an OR gate 93.
  • These inputs are designated alpha sticks and correspond to the two alpha sticks of the standard ASCII code.
  • the output of OR gate 93 is coupled to a flip-flop 94 on encoder has not encoded a numeric character the condition line will be low because of a lack of output from the OR gate causing the Q output to go from high to low.
  • One application of the present invention is printing sales tickets which usually have the name of the goods or the customers name, a dollar amount, and a credit card number.
  • this arrangement of paths readily lends itself to this type of printing. It will also be apparent that where, for example, three categories of characters are needed that the printing wheel could be subdivided into three helical paths. This would, of course, require that the logic be modified to provide additional skips in the system.
  • the present invention provides a printer which by means of its plurality of helical paths eliminates the normal dead space in the printing wheel and at the same time provides a wheel with smaller width and circumferential dimensions with a given number of characters to allow higher rotational speeds.
  • a printer comprising a rotatable wheel having type elements each having a predetermined and identical character position width for printing various characters on an object said elements being located on said rotatable wheel in at least two separate helical paths, said paths being offset from one another by less than said character position width, means for rotating said device on its axis one revolution while traversing along its axis a character position width, and means for selectively bringing said type elements into contact with said object to be printed.
  • a printer as in claim I where said selective means includes hammer means mounted for transverse movement with said rotatable wheel and juxtaposed with said helical paths.
  • a printer as in claim 1 where said rotatable wheel has only two helical paths one path having characters of one type and the other path characters of another type.
  • a printer as in claim I said rotatable wheel has only two helical paths having identical pitches one being offset from the other by one-half of said character position width with a tolerance of :50 percent of one-half of said width.
  • each of said helical paths has an identical pitch which is determined by said character position width and the total number of characters on said rotatable wheel.
  • a printer as in claim 1 together with means for determining which of said characters is to be rinted and including means for skipping a print operation for one revolution of said rotatable wheel in response to said determining means indicating a change from a character in one helical path to a character in a predetermined other helical path.
  • said determining means includes a counter which is preloaded with a number corresponding to the character to be printed and said skipping means inhibits operation of said counter for one revolution of said rotatable wheel.
  • a printer as in claim 1 including an ink roller mounted on a fixed longitudinal axis extending the length of the range of axial transverse movement of said rotatable wheel together with means for rotating said roller at a predetermined speed and together with means for coupling the periphery of said ink roller with the periphery said rotatable wheel whereby said rotatable wheel is rotated by said ink roller.
  • a printer as in claim 10 together with means for engag' ing and disengaging said rotatable wheel from said ink roller during axial movement of said rotatable wheel in one direction.
  • a printer as in claim 11 in which said engaging/disengaging means includes eccentric means mounted for rotary movement and coupled to carriage means on which said rotatable device is mounted for rotation for lifting said carriage and said rotatable wheel off of said ink roller.
  • a printer as in claim 1 where said rotatable wheel includes a slotted code cup having a number of clocking slots each corresponding to a character, one of said clocking slots being cut deeper than the remainder to serve as an index slot and together with two photodetectors and a juxtaposed light source between which said slots move, one of said photodetectors being positioned to be activated only by passage of said index slot and the other photodetector being positioned to be actuated by passage of said clock slots said one photodetector being located with respect to the other photodetector to be activated in a leading phase relationship.

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US34437A 1970-05-04 1970-05-04 Double helical printer Expired - Lifetime US3669237A (en)

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US3443770A 1970-05-04 1970-05-04

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DE (1) DE2121569A1 (fr)
FR (1) FR2091083A5 (fr)
GB (1) GB1295013A (fr)

Cited By (6)

* Cited by examiner, † Cited by third party
Publication number Priority date Publication date Assignee Title
US3893389A (en) * 1973-04-02 1975-07-08 An Controls Inc Di Ticket printer
US3896919A (en) * 1973-12-21 1975-07-29 Sperry Rand Corp Double band type carrier
US4027766A (en) * 1974-07-15 1977-06-07 Ing. C. Olivetti & C., S.P.A. Inking device for the type-carrier element of a calculating machine
US4106873A (en) * 1977-03-14 1978-08-15 International Business Machines Corporation Disk printer inking mechanism
US4212549A (en) * 1978-09-05 1980-07-15 Dataproducts Corporation Disc printer
US4230039A (en) * 1977-05-20 1980-10-28 Citizen Watch Company Limited Drum printer with helically arranged type sets

Citations (4)

* Cited by examiner, † Cited by third party
Publication number Priority date Publication date Assignee Title
US2926602A (en) * 1957-05-20 1960-03-01 Burroughs Corp Automatic printer
US3356199A (en) * 1966-02-23 1967-12-05 Friden Inc Printer having type disk rotatable in a plane parallel to the printing line
US3420164A (en) * 1964-12-23 1969-01-07 Int Computers Ltd Cyclically operable printing and proportional spacing apparatus
US3526309A (en) * 1967-06-30 1970-09-01 Singer Co Ink transfer roller with ink supply interrupter for a type wheel

Patent Citations (4)

* Cited by examiner, † Cited by third party
Publication number Priority date Publication date Assignee Title
US2926602A (en) * 1957-05-20 1960-03-01 Burroughs Corp Automatic printer
US3420164A (en) * 1964-12-23 1969-01-07 Int Computers Ltd Cyclically operable printing and proportional spacing apparatus
US3356199A (en) * 1966-02-23 1967-12-05 Friden Inc Printer having type disk rotatable in a plane parallel to the printing line
US3526309A (en) * 1967-06-30 1970-09-01 Singer Co Ink transfer roller with ink supply interrupter for a type wheel

Cited By (6)

* Cited by examiner, † Cited by third party
Publication number Priority date Publication date Assignee Title
US3893389A (en) * 1973-04-02 1975-07-08 An Controls Inc Di Ticket printer
US3896919A (en) * 1973-12-21 1975-07-29 Sperry Rand Corp Double band type carrier
US4027766A (en) * 1974-07-15 1977-06-07 Ing. C. Olivetti & C., S.P.A. Inking device for the type-carrier element of a calculating machine
US4106873A (en) * 1977-03-14 1978-08-15 International Business Machines Corporation Disk printer inking mechanism
US4230039A (en) * 1977-05-20 1980-10-28 Citizen Watch Company Limited Drum printer with helically arranged type sets
US4212549A (en) * 1978-09-05 1980-07-15 Dataproducts Corporation Disc printer

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Publication number Publication date
FR2091083A5 (fr) 1972-01-14
DE2121569A1 (de) 1971-11-25
GB1295013A (fr) 1972-11-01

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