JPH0550659A - Serial dot type printer - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To improve quality of a joining part by joining the joining part between printing bands by an irregular pattern by a method wherein a random number generator which makes irregular intermittent printing be performed is connected to both end serial dot printing elements among a plurality of serial dot pixels. CONSTITUTION:A printing head 4 slides, in a reciprocating manner, normally to a carrying direction of recording paper on a platen. Further, a plurality of serial dot printing elements, which are not given in the figure, provided to the printing head 4 are driven selectively according to a pixel signal with a control drive circuit 9. Further, a recording paper carrying mechanism carries recording paper intermittently for each printing pattern width to be formed according to the reciprocating slide of the printing head 4. In that case, a random number generater which makes irregular intermittent printing be performed is connected to the serial dot pixels at both ends. Then, the last line of a preceding printing pattern is driven in an irregular intermittent state, and the initial line of the printing pattern following it is driven in a printing state complementing the printing state of the last line above-mentioned.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

TECHNICAL FIELD The present invention relates to a serial dot type printer.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art Conventionally, as shown in FIGS. 2A and 2B, a print head 4 having a plurality of serial dot printing elements 5 provided in a row and a platen 1 are provided so as to face each other. A general printing apparatus has a structure in which the recording sheet 3 is slidable in the longitudinal direction (sub-scanning direction) while being wound around the take-up reel 2. In such a configuration, while the print head 4 reciprocally slides in the main scanning direction (direction perpendicular to the paper feeding direction), the serial dot print elements 5 arranged in a line in a part of the print head 4 are provided. The printing is selectively turned on / off and printed as shown in FIG. The length H, which is normally arranged in the sub-scanning direction of the serial dot printing element 5, is the printing area,
Called the print bandwidth. Therefore, in the case of printing a large area, after the print head 4 slides in the main scanning direction to complete the printing of the print band width H, the recording paper 3 is fed in the sub-scan direction by the print band width H, and again. As described above, the data of a predetermined area is recorded while repeating the sequence in which the print head 4 executes the printing operation.

[0003]

In the apparatus of this type which has been conventionally used, as shown in FIG. 5, the first and second print patterns, and the second and third print patterns are used. For example, it is necessary to join the printing portions for each printing band width (H), which is important in terms of printing quality. In this case, since all the joining portions of the printing bands of the printed printing pattern (hereinafter, the printing pattern will be described as a solid pattern for easy understanding) are in a straight line flat state, for example, as shown in FIG. There is no problem when printing is performed without overlapping or separating the surfaces, but when the end portions of the respective print patterns are overlapped or separated from each other as shown in (B) and (C), there is a gap between the print bands. The joint becomes extremely visible,
When printing a large continuous image, it was treated as a defect, resulting in so-called poor print quality. This is due to various factors such as manufacturing accuracy of print head (print element position, shape, etc.), feeding accuracy of recording paper, device assembly accuracy, environment (temperature, humidity, etc.). It was a difficult problem.

According to the present invention, in order to solve the print quality defect due to the overlap or separation of the conventional print band joining portions, the end faces of the adjacent bands are formed into a comb-teeth-shaped intermittent pattern to join the two. It is an object of the present invention to provide a device equipped with this intermittent pattern generating circuit.

[0005]

In order to solve the above problems, the present invention provides a plurality of serial dot printing elements provided in a part of a serial print head and arranged in rows in the sub-scanning direction, and the serial dots. A serial dot print element control drive circuit for controlling print on / off of at least one serial dot print element formed at one end or both ends of the print element when the print head slides in the main scanning direction; A configuration is provided in which a random number generation circuit that generates a timing for selectively determining the OFF state is provided, and recording paper is fed in the sub-scanning direction so that the element portions at the end portions of the serial dot printing elements are printed in an overlapping manner (print band end). The end portions of the above are partially overlapped with each other).

[0006]

When a designated image is printed by the serial dot type printing apparatus constructed as described above, the end portions of the printing bands printed by the serial dot printing elements arranged in a row in the sub-scanning direction are comb teeth. Due to the positional relationship in which overlapping printing is performed with a pattern-like intermittent pattern, the band to be printed now or the band to be printed next may bear the print sharing of this overlapping part, resulting in a zigzag comb surface between the bands. The pattern becomes an intermittent print pattern. The serial dot printing element control drive circuit controls ON / OFF of the intermittent printing of the band-to-band overlapping printing portion, and the printing is selected by the timing signal from the random number generation circuit. Therefore, the joints between the print bands are joined in an irregular pattern, making it very difficult to read the joints of the bands. In other words, the quality of the joint is improved.

[0007]

Embodiments of the present invention will now be described in detail with reference to the drawings. The configurations shown in (A), (B), and (C) of FIG. 2 show a serial dot type printing apparatus to which the present invention is applied. As described above, the winding is performed on the platen 1. The recording paper 3 wound around the reel 2 is provided so as to perform overlapping printing by one dot in the sub-scanning direction in a comb-teeth intermittent pattern, and the print head 4 provided facing the platen 1 performs main scanning. It is a structure that can slide back and forth in any direction. A plurality of serial dot printing elements 5 are provided on the surface of the print head 4 facing the platen 1, and form a row in the sub-scanning direction as shown in FIG. The print head 4 is supplied with a drive signal from a serial dot print element control drive circuit 9 (see FIG. 1) (not shown) for controlling the print drive of the serial dot print element 5 through a head signal cable (not shown). Has become.

Next, the operating state of this structure will be described. In the state of FIG. 2A, the print head 4 is slid in the main scanning direction (the direction of arrow X), and each serial dot print element 5 is read from the image data storage memory 7 of FIG. When the print head 4 is driven by a drive signal output from the serial dot print element control drive circuit 9 via the interface 8 based on the data, each serial dot print element 5 prints a pattern based on the data.

In this case, (A), (B), (C) of FIG.
2C among the serial dot printing elements 5 arranged in a row on one surface of the print head 4 when printing continuous images by connecting the patterns 11, 12, and 13 shown in FIG. The serial dot printing element 5n at the bottom is controlled to be printed on / off by the serial dot printing element control drive circuit 9. Moreover,
The printing on / off timing is eliminated by generating random random number data from the random number generating circuit 10 shown in FIG. 1, decoding the random number data, and inputting it to the serial dot print element control drive circuit 9 as a print timing signal. Toothed intermittent printing is formed (11b in FIG. 3A).
Part). Similarly, for the printing of the next print band, the uppermost stage (5 (1) shown in (C) of FIG. 2) is print-driven at the timing opposite to the drive signal of 5n (12a of FIG. 3B). Part), and the serial dot printing element 5 (n) at the lowermost stage is also printed by a print drive signal of a new irregular pattern different from the irregular pattern (section 12b in FIG. 3B).

As a result, as shown in FIG. 3, the joint portion 11b of the present print band pattern 11 is printed without irregular teeth.
Then, the joint pattern 12a of the irregular toothless print of the print band 12 for the next print has an inverted print pattern, and the joint 12b of the irregular toothless print of the print band 12 of the next print has the aforementioned 11b and 12a. It becomes a new irregular comb-shaped print pattern completely different from. further,
Joining part 13 of print band pattern 13 at the final stage
3A, the uppermost serial dot printing element 5 (1) is turned on by the printing timing signal of the random number generation circuit 10 and the serial dot printing element control drive circuit 9 as shown in FIG. A new irregular comb-shaped pattern 13a, which is controlled to be off and different from the printed irregular pattern, is formed by intermittent printing. In this way, of the print band width H, the recording paper 3 is conveyed so that the ends of the print bands are overlapped and the data of the overlapped print part is shared between the present print band side and the next print band side. The serial dot printing element control drive circuit 9 controls whether the printing of the shared data is negative by the serial dot printing element of the current printing band or negative by the serial dot printing element of the next printing band.

Next, the appearance of the print pattern obtained by operating as described above will be described. As shown in FIGS. 3 and 4, the irregular comb-like print portion 11 b of the pattern 11 and the irregular comb-like print portion 12 of the pattern 12 are shown.
Since a is a printed pattern shape which is reversed to each other, when the patterns 11 and 12 are joined, the irregular toothless printing portions 11b and 12a are fitted to each other in a male-female fitting type to form a continuous printed image. Is. Further, the pattern at the joint between the irregular tooth-shaped print portion 12b of the pattern 12 and the above-mentioned 12b of the next print band is a print pattern which is reversed to each other as described above, so that it is integrated and a continuous image is obtained. Can be done.

Furthermore, the joining portion between the irregular comb-shaped print portion 13a of the last pattern 13 and the above-mentioned 13a in the print band immediately before the last one is the same as that described above. The dot configuration shown on the right side of FIG. 3 shows the actual printing state printed by each corresponding serial dot printing element 5 when the pattern shown on the left side is shown. Therefore, the patterns 11, 12, and 13 described above are integrally printed as a continuous image, as shown in FIG. Further, the printing states shown in FIGS. 4 (B) and 4 (C) show the case where the print bands which have been generated conventionally overlap each other and the case where the print bands are separated from each other, which are printed by the apparatus according to the present invention. However, both in the case of overlapping and in the case of being separated from each other, the print splicing portion becomes much more ambiguous than in the conventional case, the image quality is improved, and the actual image formation is hardly affected.

[0013]

Since the serial dot type printing apparatus according to the present invention has the above-described structure and operation, the image forming of the joint portion between the respective print band patterns is made extremely smooth by the irregular tooth-like print pattern. It is done, and the appearance of the splicing of the printing at the joint is apparently ambiguous, so the splicing is difficult to understand and the image quality is improved, as well as major changes in the mechanism and higher accuracy, Since it is possible to eliminate or alleviate the requirement for the assembly technique, it is possible to improve the quality such as the image quality while reducing the manufacturing cost, which is a great effect.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing a circuit configuration of the present invention.

2A and 2B are a front view and a side view of a serial dot type printer according to the present invention, and FIG. 2C is an enlarged front view showing the configuration of a print head.

FIGS. 3A, 3B, and 3C are print configuration diagrams showing a pattern of a plurality of print bands in an exploded manner, in which FIG.
It is a figure of a print band pattern of the 2nd time, (B) is a print band pattern in the middle of the 2nd time onward, and (C) is a figure of a final print band pattern.

4 (A), (B), and (C) are configuration diagrams showing a state in which a plurality of print band patterns are continuously printed, in which (A) is a state as designed and (B) is FIG. 7C is a diagram showing a state where the prints are overlapped with each other, and FIG.

5 (A), (B) and (C) are configuration diagrams showing images printed by a conventional serial dot type printer,
(A) is a design value, (B) is a state where prints are overlapped, and (C) is a state where prints are separated.

[Explanation of symbols]

1 platen 2 take-up reel 3 recording paper 4 print head 5 serial dot printing element 5 (1) topmost serial dot printing element 5 (n) bottommost serial dot printing element 7 image data storage memory 8 interface 9 dot printing element Control drive circuit 10 Random number generation circuit 11 First band pattern configuration diagram 11b Serial dot printing element 5 at the bottom
FIG. 12 is a diagram showing an irregular comb-like print pattern formed by printing in (n). FIG. 12 is a second print band pattern configuration diagram. 12a The uppermost serial dot print element 5
FIG. 12b is an illustration of an irregular comb tooth-shaped print pattern formed by printing in (1).
FIG. 13 shows an irregular comb tooth-shaped print pattern formed by printing in (n) 13 final print band pattern 13a top serial dot print element 5
Figure of irregular comb tooth print pattern printed by (1)

Claims (1)

[Claims] 1. A print head capable of reciprocally sliding on a recording paper on a platen in a direction perpendicular to the feeding direction of the recording paper, and a column provided in the printing head in the same direction as the feeding direction of the recording paper. A plurality of serial dot printing elements arranged in a line, and connected to the plurality of serial dot printing elements,
A serial dot print element control drive circuit that selectively drives this in accordance with a pixel signal, and intermittently feeds the recording paper for each width of the print pattern that is formed according to each reciprocal sliding movement of the print head. In the serial dot type printing device comprising a recording paper feeding mechanism for connecting and printing each printing pattern, among the plurality of serial dot printing elements arranged in the above-mentioned row, the serial dot printing elements at both ends are A random number generator for performing regular intermittent printing is connected, and at the connection portion of the print pattern, the random number generator drives the last line of the preceding print pattern into an irregular intermittent print state, and The first line of the subsequent print pattern is driven to a print state that complements the print state of the last line of the preceding print pattern, and the recording paper feed mechanism is Serial dot printer, characterized in that for feeding the recording sheet to print duplicate rows and Hatsugyo end of the print pattern.