JPH0351165A - Inking apparatus for thermal transfer printer - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To eliminate the limit of the arrangement of the present apparatus by a method wherein a belt-like ink holding body is brought into contact with the single half surface of the outer cylindrical surface of an inking roller while the inking roller is rotated and ink is transferred and applied to the recording surface thereof. CONSTITUTION:An inking roller 901 is combined with the cylindrical surface 905 provided to a housing 904 but the radius of the circular arc of the cylindrical surface 905 is taken so as to become larger than the outer diameter of the inking roller 901 by about several mm or less and both of the inking roller 901 and the housing 904 are combined to form a fine gap 906. The ink 908 preliminarily melted by a heater 907 is supplied to the fine gap 906 through a supply passage 909. The ink 908 in the fine gap 906 is allowed to penetrate in the rotating inking roller 901 and transferred to the recording surface of the ink holding body 701 running along the upper part of the inking roller 901 in a contact state by two guide rollers 910. By this constitution, the apparatus can be inverted.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION (Field of Industrial Application) The present invention relates to an inking device for repeatedly reproducing an ink carrier in a printer using a thermal transfer recording method.

(Prior Art) Conventionally, the basic configuration of a thermal transfer recording type line printer capable of recording on plain paper using a thermal head is as shown in FIG. An ink ribbon 201 coated with an ink having a relatively low melting point, such as a binder material such as ester wax and a coloring agent such as a pigment added thereto, is wound up in advance from a reel A 202 to a heating resistor via a guide roller 104. Thermal head 1 has multiple units arranged in series.
While applying appropriate pressure between the platen 120 and the paper 121, the heating resistor is heated in response to the print signal applied to the thermal head 118, and the ink ribbon 201 is heated. Recorded ink ribbon by melting and transferring ink B2
It is wound onto O3. Further, such a thermal transfer recording method has the feature that printing can be performed not only on plain paper but also on resin-based materials such as polyester such as OHP film as a recording medium.

(Problems to be Solved by the Invention) However, the ink ribbon 201 has a drawback that it cannot be used again after the ink has been transferred to the recording medium. Furthermore, there is an uneconomical aspect in that ink remains on the ink ribbon 201 other than the thermally transferred portion and is discarded without being used. There was a challenge to make it. In addition, ink ribbon 201
Reel A20 for winding and holding the material to a predetermined length
2 and a reel B2O3 for winding up the used ink ribbon 201.
203 is required inside the apparatus, which also causes the problem of increasing the size of the printer.

Further, the printed characters remain on the used ink ribbon in an inverted form, which can be easily identified by a third party, which poses a problem in terms of confidentiality. Another disadvantage is that the number of characters that can be printed at one time is extremely small compared to other printing methods such as wire dot printers. These problems have made the use of thermal transfer printers extremely expensive. In contrast, the ink ribbon is replaced with a heat-resistant and durable belt-shaped ink holder, ink is supplied to it, the ink is transferred to the recording medium by a thermal head, and after transfer, the ink is stored in the ink holder again. By doing so, the above problem will be solved. As a means to solve this problem, JP-A-62-4
There are devices disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 8594 and Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 62-56177, both of which use an ink supply device in which an ink holder is placed in a groove in a large ink container, or a rotating roller is placed in a groove and pressure is applied. Ink is supplied to the ink holder by sandwiching it between rollers, and excess ink is scraped off with a knife. However, these inking devices have a pressure roller and a knife, which puts an unnecessarily large load on the ink holder when it runs, and requires a relatively large ink container to allow the ink to soak in the groove. In addition, there were restrictions on their placement, creating a major problem in putting the printer into practical use.

An object of the present invention is to provide an inking device for a thermal transfer printer that solves the above problems.

(Means for Solving the Problems) The inking device for a thermal transfer printer of the present invention has a rotatable cylindrical shape made of a porous and heat-resistant material so as to store the ink, and has a rotatable cylindrical shape inside. supplying the ink by surface tension between an inking roller provided with a heat generation source for melting the ink and storing it in the main body and an outer cylindrical surface of the rotating inking roller;
a housing having a cylindrical surface with an inner diameter slightly larger than the outer diameter of the inking roller so as to create a minute gap for the ink to penetrate into the inking roller body; an ink chamber for melting and storing ink in the housing; It consists of a heater.

(Function) According to the present invention, first, heat-fusible ink, which has been melted in advance by a heater in the ink chamber of the inking device, is supplied to the cylindrical surface of the housing, and then externally supplied to the cylindrical surface of the housing through a minute gap. Surface tension causes ink to penetrate into the inking roller, which has half of its cylindrical surface in contact, and at the same time, while rotating the inking roller, a belt-shaped ink holder is brought into contact with one half of the outer cylindrical surface of the inking roller. Then, the ink is transferred and applied to the recording surface, thereby supplying the ink to the ink holder.

(Example) Examples of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings.

A sectional view of an embodiment of the inking device of the present invention is shown in FIG. First, a rotatable cylindrical inking roller 90 made of sintered metal, which is a collection of countless interconnected capillaries made by sintering metal powder, for example.
1 is provided, and its length is approximately the same as the width of the ink holder shown in FIG. 2, that is, approximately the same length as the recording width. Then, a linear heat source 902 having the same length, such as a halogen lamp or a ceramic heater, is provided inside. These heat generating sources 902 do not need to rotate together with the inking roller 901, but the heat generating sources 902
If the temperature fluctuation range of the inking roller 901 due to ON-OFF is large, the temperature fluctuation range can be reduced by providing a heat storage roller 903 inside the inking roller 901 as shown in the figure. The inking roller 901 has a cylindrical surface 9 provided in a housing 904 as shown in the figure.
05, the radius of the arc of the cylindrical surface 905 is several mm or less larger than the outer diameter of the inking roller, and by combining them, the minute gap 90
6 is formed. And housing 904
Ink 908, which has been melted in advance by a heater 907 provided at the lower left side of the figure, is supplied to the minute gap 906 through a supply path 909. The ink 908 in the small gap 906 is allowed to penetrate into the rotating inking roller 901, and the ink 908 contained in the inking roller 901 is transferred to the upper part of the inking roller 901 by two guide rollers 910. The ink is transferred to the recording surface of the ink holder 701 that comes into contact with and moves.

As shown in FIG. 3, a line printer using the inking device 705 described above has an ink holding body 701 stretched by a feed roller 704, a plurality of guide rollers 703, and the inking device 705 described above, and a hopper. 70
During recording, the recording paper 708 preset in 7 is fed out one by one by a pickup roller 709.
Along the path shown by the two-dot chain line, the ink holder 701 is first passed through the rotating backup roller 702 so as to be sandwiched between the thermal head 706 and then discharged to the stacker 710 . Here, the ink holding body 701 and the recording paper 708
It goes without saying that the traveling speeds of the two are the same. Furthermore, if the feed roller 704 is made of a metal roller that has good thermal conductivity and is easy to dissipate heat to the outside, the inking device 70
cooling of the ink on the ink holding body 701 supplied in step 5;
The ink holding body 70 can promote coagulation.
A line printer capable of running at a high speed of 1, that is, capable of high-speed recording, is obtained.

Note that the above description of the embodiment of the inking device does not describe the limitations of the embodiment depending on the recording format of the printer, ie, serial printer, line printer, etc., and the present invention can be applied even if the embodiment is replaced with a different recording format. It is clear that this objective will be achieved.

(Effects of the Invention) The inking device of the present invention has the advantage that a large load is not applied to the ink holder when it travels, and it can be placed upside down, so it can be freely arranged.

By adopting the above-mentioned inking device, the problems of economic efficiency and printing speed of conventional thermal transfer printers can be solved, and ink can be efficiently transferred to recording paper at high speeds with high economic efficiency. A printer capable of recording is obtained.

[Brief explanation of drawings]

Fig. 1 is a sectional view of an embodiment of the inking device for a thermal transfer printer of the present invention, Fig. 2 is a perspective view of an ink holder used in the line printer of Fig. 3, and Fig. 3 is a side perspective view of the line printer. , FIG. 4 is a perspective view showing the configuration of a conventional thermal transfer line printer. In the figure, 101.107... ink holder, 1
23゜908...Thermofusible ink, 901...Inking roller, 906...Minute space, 118.706
. . . Thermal direction, 121° 708 . . . Recording paper, 705 . . . Inking device.

Claims (1)

[Claims] In order to use the ink holder repeatedly in a thermal transfer printer, it has a rotatable cylindrical shape made of a porous and heat-resistant material that can store heat-melting ink. The ink is supplied by surface tension between an inking roller provided with a heat generation source for melting and storing the ink in the inking roller body and the outer cylindrical surface of the rotating inking roller, and the ink is supplied to the inking roller body by surface tension. A housing having a cylindrical surface with an inner diameter slightly larger than the outer diameter of the inking roller to create a minute gap for ink to penetrate, an ink chamber for melting and storing ink in the housing, and a heater are provided. Features of inking device for thermal transfer printers.