JPS6046278A - Printer - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To obtain a printer which facilitates forming printing data, by a method wherein position is corrected each time a change-over of a printing means is designated so that a printing position is apparently fixed. CONSTITUTION:When printing a segment of a line on a paper on a platen 2 through a printing position (b) of a ball-point pen printer 5b after printing a character through a printing position (a) of a daisy wheel printer 4, a carriage 1 is moved rightward by a distance (k), and the paper is returned by reversely rotating the platen 2 by a distance (m), whereby the position is so corrected that the point of the ball-point pen 5b comes to a position next to the character printed by the printer 4. In correcting the position, the carriage 1 and/or the platen 2 is moved by calculating the current printing data and the subsequent printing data to thereby perform data-optimizing control for changing over the printing position, and the printing position of the printing means on the carriage 1 is effectively modified.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION Technical Field The present invention relates to a printer, and more particularly, it has a plurality of types of printing means such as a daisy wheel printing device and a ballpoint pen printing device, and since the respective head positions are far apart, This invention relates to a multifunction printer in which the printing position differs depending on each printing means.

Conventional technologyCharacter printers such as daisy printers are suitable for high-speed printing of characters and symbols, but they are suitable for printing graphic information such as graphs. Non-impact printing devices using ballpoint pens, ink jets, laser beams, etc. are more suitable for printing characters in different fonts, underlines, ruled lines, etc. Therefore, for example, a ballpoint pen printing device is installed in the carriage of a daisy printer at the same time, and when printing characters and symbols, it is printed as a normal daisy printer, but graphs, figures, ruled lines, etc. are printed using the ballpoint pen printing device. It's convenient if you do it the same way.

In such a composite printer, a plurality of printing means are simultaneously mounted on the carriage, resulting in a plurality of print heads, and depending on the mounting method, the positions of the print heads may be separated from each other. However, printer print data is generally created by considering the print position as one location, and it is not possible to create print data by correcting the position by the amount of misalignment of each head each time the printing method is switched. This is extremely complicated work. Furthermore, when converting data for position correction using a microcomputer or the like, a program step is required to convert print data, resulting in a problem of slow printing speed.

Purpose The present invention has been made in order to solve the above problems, and in a printer having a plurality of printing means with different printing positions, position correction is automatically performed each time switching of the printing means is instructed. To provide a printer in which the printing position can be regarded as one apparently, and printing data can be easily created. Another object of the present invention is to provide a printer that can perform the above position correction without affecting the printing speed.

Configuration The configuration of the present invention will be described below based on specific examples. FIG. 1 shows a multifunction printer in which a ballpoint pen printing device is mounted on a daisy printer carriage.

As is conventionally known, the carriage 1 is moved and the platen 2 is rotated, and the printing device on the carriage 1 sequentially prints on the sheets 3 on the platen 2. However, on the carriage 1, there is a daisy wheel printing device R4 and a ballpoint pen printing device 5 (in this example, four color ballpoint pens 5b to 5b).
5e are provided. ), and it is possible to selectively use the one suitable for the printed content.

In Fig. 1, a conventionally known daisy wheel printing system M
4 is provided in the center of the carriage 1, and the type wheel is rotated by a selection motor to select the desired type, and the printing hammer is used to move the type wheel through the ribbon to the platen 2.
to print. Further, a conventionally known ballpoint pen printing device 5 is mounted on the left side of the carriage 1 facing the platen 2, and four color ballpoint pens 5b. By driving magnets 5c, 5d, and 5e, they are selectively put into use and printing is performed.

The printing position a of the daisy wheel printing device 4 and the printing positions (pen tips) b, c, of each of the four ballpoint pens 5b to 5e.
Figure 2 shows the positional relationship between d and e. According to FIG. 2, a daisy wheel printing device 4
After sequentially printing each character rABcJ through the printing position a of Move platen 2 by distance de
By reversing the paper by n and returning the paper, the pen tip of the color ballpoint pen 5b, that is, the printing position, is corrected so that it is next to the letter "C" that has already been printed by the daisy wheel printing device M4, and then the line segment is It is necessary to make it possible to print.

FIG. 3 is a block diagram showing one example of the configuration of the printer of the present invention. The master control unit 31 receives data from the outside.
Upon receiving I, determine the content of the data and select l.
Data is transferred to the lrlwa section 32, hammer control section 33, space control section 34, line feed control section 35, and ballpoint pen printing device control section 36. Each control section 32~
36, according to the transferred data, type selection mechanisms 37 and 36, respectively.
Hammer start mechanism 38, carriage feed mechanism 39,
The operations of the paper feed mechanism 40 and the ballpoint pen drive mechanism 41 are controlled. Further, the master control section 31 sets the print mode selected by the external data signal (2) in the current print mode register 42, and sets the newly indicated print mode in the new print mode register 43. Further, the master control section 31 can refer to a memory 44 that stores the mutual positional relationship between printing positions. memory 4
4 is preferably constructed from a non-volatile memory such as a ROM.

Table 1 is an example of a table related to the mutual positional relationship of each head in the memory 44.

In Table 1, printing modes a to e correspond to selection of printing means having printing positions a to e. SP
The data indicates the space interval, the LF data indicates the line feed amount, and especially the SP data. LF data with negative values indicate the amount of backspace and the amount of backline feed, respectively.

Next, we will explain the flowchart in Fig. 4 regarding the head position correction operation accompanying the print mode change in the block diagram in Fig. 3.
This will be explained with reference to 1. First, the master control unit 31
When receiving the external data signal (2), it is determined whether or not it is a print mode setting code. If the code is other than the print mode setting code, the process proceeds to other processes, but if it is the print mode setting code, the contents are set in the new print mode register 43. Next, the memory 4 to be referenced from the contents of the current print mode register 42 and the contents of the new print mode register 43
The address of No. 4 is calculated and accessed as described later, and the corresponding position correction data is obtained (see Table 1). The position correction data obtained by referring to the memory 44, that is, the SP data and the LF data, are transferred from the master control unit 31 to the space control unit 34, line feed control unit 35, respectively, and then sent to the carriage feed mechanism 39, paper feed mechanism 40, As a result, the head position is corrected based on the position correction data.

In the above description, one example of a method for calculating a reference memory address will be described with particular reference to diagram M5. First, the master control section 31 waits for the operations of the respective control sections 32 to 36 to be completed, and then sets a new print mode code in the register 43. The printing mode is 1.2.3 depending on the printing position a of the daisy wheel, and 1.2.3 with the printing position 1b, c, d, and e of the color ballpoint pen.
．． This corresponds to code 4. The register 42 stores the currently selected print mode. Next, double the contents of register 43 and register 4
The contents of 2 multiplied by 10 are added by an adder 45,
This value is accessed as the address of the ROM 44. For example, if the currently selected print mode is a print mode based on the daisy wheel print position a, and the newly designated print mode is a print mode based on the color ballpoint pen print position e, the contents of the register 42 are 0, The content of register 43 is 4, and the content of register 42 is 1.
The value obtained by adding 0 times and twice the contents of register 43 is "8"
It is. The value “8” obtained in this way is shown in Table 1.
, indicates the start address of the memory where SP data and L data are stored for position correction when switching from the daisy wheel printing position ua to the color ballpoint pen printing position fie. Therefore, the color ballpoint pen In order to move the print position lie to the current position of print position a of the daisy wheel, first read memory address 8 and press S
It is sufficient to transfer the P data 1 to the space control section 34, and then read out the memory address 9 and transfer the LF data 10 to the line feed control section 35. That is, the carriage 1 is moved forward by ρ bits and the paper is moved backward by n bits. On the other hand, the contents of the register 43 are changed to the register 42 by the addition end signal from the adder 45.
, and the current print mode is updated. Furthermore, after waiting for an all-ready signal indicating the completion of the operations of the space control section 34 and line feed control section 35, the magnet drivers 47b to 47e, which are instructed via the decoder 46 according to the contents of the register 42, are selectively driven to bring down the pen. All you have to do is go through the motions.

When performing the above-mentioned position correction, the carriage 1 and/or
Alternatively, by moving the platen 2 and performing data optimization control for printing position conversion, it is also possible to more efficiently change the printing position of the printing means on the carriage 1. FIG. 6 shows a block diagram of an example of the configuration of the space control unit 34 (or line feed control unit 35) that performs data optimization control when changing the print position, and shows the configuration of the space control unit 34 (or line feed control unit 35) that performs data optimization control when changing the print position. The operation of the data optimization control section at this time will be explained. The explanation will be about space control, but
A similar explanation can be made for line feed control. Data optimization control, as is conventionally known, involves storing consecutive data in pamphlet 1, performing appropriate arithmetic processing between the data, omitting unnecessary movement, and ultimately achieving the most efficient This is to move the printing position of the printing means to be used next to the position on the paper where printing is to be performed.

As shown in Figure 6, space l! The fall unit 34 includes a buffer 7761 for storing transferred data, an adder/subtractor 63 for performing arithmetic processing between data, a counter 62 for storing movement data after calculation, and a buffer 7761 for storing transferred data, a counter 62 for storing movement data after calculation, and a buffer 7761 for storing transferred data, a counter 62 for storing movement data after calculation, and a buffer 7761 for storing transferred data, a counter 62 for storing movement data after calculation, and a buffer 7761 for storing transferred data, a counter 62 for storing movement data after calculation, and a buffer 7761 for storing transferred data. Counter 64 for storing data
, a timer 67 for setting the waiting time for the next data for data optimization control. A timer 68 for creating a predetermined pulse width for the step motor of the carriage feed mechanism 39, and a four-phase signal A. for the step motor.
B. C. It is composed of a quaternary counter 69 and a decoder 70 for controlling the phase of D, and encoders 65, 66, 71, etc. for determining the sign in arithmetic processing.

The master control unit 3 is used for position correction due to changes in printing means.
SP1 is the space data transferred from SP1 to the space control section 34, and after changing the printing means, the master control section 1j 31 is used to move the printing position of the changed printing means to the position on the paper where printing is to be performed first. The space data transferred to the space control unit 34 subsequent to SP1 is designated as SP2. First, data SP1 from the master control unit 31 is stored in the buffer 61 if the buffer nor signal is OI1, and if it is data in the forward direction, it is stored in the encoder 65.
is reset, and if the data is in the reverse direction, the encoder 65
is set. Further, when the buffer 7 full signal is "1", the timer 67 is refreshed and waits until the buffer full signal becomes "0". Next, the data S in the buffer 61
P1 is added or subtracted from the contents of the counter 62 in the adder/subtractor 63, and either addition or subtraction is done by exclusive OR of the output values of the encoder 65 and the encoder 66 indicating the direction of the data in the counter 62. It is determined. That is, if the values of encoder 65 and encoder 66 are the same, addition is performed, and if they are different, subtraction is performed.

Incidentally, the counter 62 is transferred earlier and the timer 67
If SP data waiting to be executed is stored depending on the retention time, or if all previous SP data has been executed, the value is 0.

The result of the addition/subtraction is stored in the counter 62 again, and if the borrow becomes ``1'' during the subtraction, the encoder 66 is inverted. and the amount of movement are as shown in Table 2. However, in Table 2, SP represents the space in the forward direction, and BSP represents the space in the reverse direction.

Next, when the new movement msP2 is transferred from the master control unit 31, the space control unit 34 performs arithmetic processing between the counter 62 and the buffer 761 in the same manner as in the case of the data SP1. When the timer 67 times out, the contents of the counter 62 are transferred to the counter 64, the value of the counter 62 is cleared, and the value of the encoder 66 is stored in the encoder 71. Note that the setting time of the timer 67 is usually 10 to 100 ms. As a result, the optimal movement value obtained by calculating the position correction data S'P1 and the new movement amount SP2 is stored in the counter 64, and the movement direction of the data in the counter 64 is stored in the encoder 71. It's going to happen.

Also, the output of the busy signal indicating that the space operation is in progress is
1″.

At the same time that the data is stored in the counter 64, the one-step operation time for the step motor in the carriage feed structure 39 is set in the timer 68, and the time-up signal of the timer 68 causes the contents of the zero mark 71 to be changed. In response, the quaternary counter 69 starts counting up or down. That is, when the encoder 71 is "o", the quaternary counter 69 counts up, and the quaternary counter 69 counts up, and the
Phase step pulse A. B. C. By sequentially outputting D, the carriage feed mechanism 39 is controlled, and the carriage 1
move in the forward direction (to the right). Also, sign @ vessel 7
When 7 is ``7'', the quaternary counter 69 counts down via the adder/subtracter 90 and moves the carriage in the reverse direction (to the left). At the same time, the timer 68 is decremented by 1 when the counter 64 is 0.
It is refreshed until . When the counter 64 reaches O, the step pulse A. B. Sending of C and D is stopped,
The monomulti 72 is triggered and outputs a pulse signal of a predetermined length, and for a certain period of time (for example, the carriage feed mechanism 39
The Vichy signal is held at the "1" state until the vibration state of the The movement of the printing position of the selected printing means is space t.
After execution for lJm and line feed fHIJm, printing in the new print mode is performed at the end of each busy signal.

During printing in the ballpoint pen mode, the mode signal becomes "1" in FIG. 6, and the gate 73 prohibits triggering of the monomulti 72 for delaying the busy signal. This is because ballpoint pen printing is a non-impact printing method, and the pen is always in a down state (the pen tip touches the paper) during printing, so there is no need to wait for the vibration of the printing mechanism to end. Furthermore, when the mode signal is "1", the gate 74 prohibits the operation of the timer 67, and
The gate 75 transfers the contents of the counter 62 to the counter 64 immediately after the addition/subtraction of the adder/subtractor 63 is completed.

Therefore, since the value of the counter 62 is cleared each time, the value of the buffer 61 is always stored in the force counter 64. This means that when drawing a figure as shown in FIG. 7 in the ballpoint pen print mode according to the arrow, for example, the space data of line segment E and the backspace data of line segment F are
This is to prevent the carriage 1 from remaining stopped by performing data optimization control. Regarding line feed control, the same problem is prevented with respect to the line feed data of the line segment G and the back line feed data of the line segment I.

Furthermore, in FIG. 6, the signal from hammer star 1 to start the hammer of the daisy wheel printing device is "1".
”, the timer 67 is reset to 1, and
Gate 76 transfers the contents of counter 62 to counter 64. This is for the purpose of forcibly outputting data that has arrived before printing in the daisy printer mode to correctly print at the set printing position. In addition, in Figure 6, 6
7a and 68a are registers that store predetermined timer values to be set in the timers 67 and 68, respectively;
81.82.83 is inverter, 84,85.86 is A
ND gate, 87.88 is OR gate, 8 is exclusive O
This is the R gate.

More than effective, the present invention makes it possible to create print data by treating the apparent print position as one location, even when multiple printing means with different print positions are selectively used depending on the application. becomes. As a result, it becomes easy to create complex print data that combines characters, graphics, and the like. Furthermore, it is possible to switch between a plurality of printing means without shifting the printing position or slowing down the printing speed.

It should be noted that the present invention is not limited to the above-described embodiments, and can be modified and applied in various ways. For example, the present invention is not limited to the combination of a daisy printer and a ballpoint pen printing device, but can also be applied to a combination of a daisy printer and a dot type printing device. A combination of thermal printers and ballpoint pen printing devices! It can also be applied to

[Brief explanation of drawings]

Fig. 1 is a plan view of a multifunction printer in which a ballpoint pen printing device is mounted on a daisy printer, Fig. 2 is an explanatory diagram showing the relationship between the positions of each head in the printer of Fig. 1, and Fig. 3 is a diagram of the printer of the present invention. A block diagram showing an example of the configuration of
The figure is a flowchart of the head position correction operation accompanying the print mode change in the printer shown in Figure 3, Figure 5 is a block diagram showing an example of a reference memory address failure method, and Figure 6 is a data optimization control. Space control unit (
FIG. 7 is an explanatory diagram showing an example of printing in the ballpoint pen printing mode. (Explanation of symbols) 1: Carriage 2: Platen 3: Paper 4: Daisy wheel printing device 5: Ballpoint pen printing device a: Daisy printer heads b, c, d, e: Color ballpoint pen 31: Master control section 34: Space control section 35: Line feed control unit 39: Carriage feed mechanism 40: Group feed mechanism 42: Current print mode register 43: New print mode register 44: Memory 435 -436- 437

Claims (3)

[Claims] 1. In a printer having a plurality of printing means having different printing positions, a printing mode storing means stores a printing mode of a currently selected printing means among the printing means; Printing mode determining means for determining the printing mode of the selected printing means; positional relationship storage means for storing the mutual relationship between the printing positions of the plurality of printing means; and information stored in the printing mode storage means. and control means for correcting the print position by referring to the positional relationship storage means in accordance with the information determined by the print mode determination means. 2. The printer according to item 1 above, wherein the plurality of types of printing means include impact type printing means and non-impact type printing means. 3. The printer according to item 2 above, wherein the impact type printing means has a daisy wheel, and the non-impact type printing means has an appropriate number of ballpoint pens.