JPH0976611A - Drive control system for cassette ribbon - Google Patents

Abstract

(57) [Summary] [Object] The present invention relates to an endless cassette ribbon for an impact-type printing apparatus, and aims to improve the service life and resource saving of the cassette ribbon. [Structure] Characters a to be optically detected which are important in print information,
When the a'and other sentences are printed by the print head 3, the drive control of the cassette ribbon 1 is performed so that the ink ribbon 5 used for each printing is selectively used. [Effect] The reduction rate of the printing density of the characters to be optically detected can be suppressed to be low, and the life of the cassette ribbon can be further extended.
Resource saving can be achieved.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a drive control method for an endless type cassette ribbon used in an impact type printing apparatus, and more particularly to a cassette ribbon having a long life and resource saving.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art In an impact type printing apparatus, a part of a ribbon in a ribbon shape housed in a ribbon cassette is guided between a print head and a print medium, and ink contained in the ribbon is passed through the print head. Printing is performed by transferring to a print medium.

When the ink contained in the ribbon is exhausted or the ribbon material is consumed, that is, when good printing quality cannot be obtained, the ribbon is replaced with a new ribbon or a water retaining member containing the ink inside the cassette case (in addition to the ribbon). There has been proposed a type of technology in which an ink replenishing member) is provided and a ribbon is brought into contact with the water retaining member to replenish the ribbon with ink. Regarding these techniques, for example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 61-10
0486, JP-A-62-248677, JP-A-63-1
Technologies such as 5778 and Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 1-168476 are disclosed.

The number of characters printed and the print density (PSS) by a type of ribbon which is replaced with a new ribbon when the good printing quality cannot be obtained (no ink replenishing member is built in) and a type of ribbon which has an ink replenishing member built-in. The relationship with (value) is as shown in the graph of FIG. The printing life of the type without built-in ink supply member is S- ₁ (---
Line), the printing life of the type with built-in ink supply member is S
₂ (-line) several times longer and longer life is achieved.

[0005]

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION It is an object of the present invention to further extend the life of a cassette ribbon having such an ink supply member and a cassette ribbon having no such ink supply member.

[0006] In recent years, a financial institution is a technology for detecting print information by an optical detecting means to determine presence / absence of print information to prevent overprinting or to detect print density to determine life of ink ribbon. Terminal equipment (ATM etc.) used in etc.
It has become widely used for such purposes.

However, when looking at the drive control system of the ink ribbon in the printing apparatus according to the prior art, there is a lack of consideration for effectively utilizing the merit of the ink replenishment type cassette ribbon and further extending the life of the cassette ribbon. However, cassette ribbons that are still fully usable are considered to have reached the end of their life and have been discarded, and further resource saving efforts are necessary.

[0008]

In order to solve the problems of the prior art, the present invention has achieved the longevity of the cassette ribbon and resource saving by the following measures.

(1) The ink ribbon 5 to be used when printing the print information in an important predetermined range for detecting the presence or absence of print information and the print density by the optical detection means and when printing other print information Used properly in the band in the ribbon width direction.

That is, when the important print information detected by the optical detection means is printed, the lower half of the ink ribbon width is used for printing, and when the other print information is printed, the ink ribbon width The drive switching control of the cassette ribbon was performed so that the upper half was used for printing.

[0011]

By the drive switching control of the cassette ribbon 5, printing of the character to be optically detected, that is, the printing density (PCS value) of the important predetermined printing range is always kept high in comparison with other printing characters. Therefore, the life of the ink ribbon 5 can be extended. (In FIG. 1, the conventional printing life can be increased to S ₁ → S ₁ ′ and S ₂ → S ₂ ′.)

[0012]

Embodiments of the present invention will now be described in detail with reference to the drawings.

FIG. 2 is a schematic view of a printing apparatus equipped with the cassette ribbon drive control system of the present invention. FIG. 3 is a schematic view of a cassette ribbon with a built-in ink tank. FIG. 4 is an explanatory diagram of the presence / absence of print information and print density detection by an optical detection unit in a print medium. FIG. 5 is an explanatory view of driving a cassette ribbon according to a conventional technique. FIG. 6 is an explanatory view of driving the cassette ribbon of the present invention.

A printing apparatus adopting the cassette ribbon drive control system according to the present invention has a structure shown in FIG. The print head 3 has a print head 3 for printing on the print medium 2 and a platen 4 for pressing the print medium 2. The ink impregnated in the ink ribbon 5 sandwiched between the print head 3 and the print medium 2 is filled with ink. The image is transferred to the print medium 2 via the print head 3. At this time, the print head 3 is movable in the arrow X ₁ X ₂ direction and the print medium 2 is movable in the arrow Y ₁ Y ₂ direction. By controlling the respective movement combinations, the print head 3 can be moved to any desired position on the print medium 2. Can be printed. Further, the ink ribbon 5 is wound in one direction by a drive means such as a ribbon winding motor (not shown), the ribbon 5 under the print head 3 moves, and the cassette ribbon 1 is stored / fed out inside the main body. .

The ink replenishing member 7 extended from the ink tank portion 6 comes into contact with the 8 side of the ink ribbon take-up gears 8 and 8'and indirectly transfers the ink from the ink tank 6 to the gear 8 so that Ink is transferred (supplied) to the ribbon 5 sandwiched between 8 and 8 '.
Therefore, the gears 8 and 8 ′ fulfill the function of storing / feeding the ribbon into the cassette case at the same time when the ink ribbon 5 is wound. The ink tank portion 6 is fixed to the cassette body by a snap-fit mechanism (not shown) that is widely used in known molded products to facilitate attachment / detachment and replacement. The ink tank portion 6 has a supply port 10 for replenishing ink.

FIG. 4 shows an example of printing on the print medium 2. In the present invention, an example of printing on a passbook will be described for the purpose of explanation. It is indispensable to process the bankbook 2 of today with an automatic teller machine such as an ATM, and the print information is detected by an optical detection means (not shown), and the presence or absence of the print information is judged to perform overprinting. In order to prevent the occurrence of the above, and to detect the print density of the printed characters, the information for replacing the ink ribbon is provided. The important print information detected by the optical detection means of the print information is not all the print information. For example, the years a, a'or the hyphens b, b'in the handling date column, the handling month c,
The predetermined detection print information is selected based on c ', the date d, d', the last two digits of the amount column e, e ', etc., and combinations thereof.
(Which is selected depends on the system.) In the conventional printing device, there is no distinction between the case of printing the character to be optically detected and the case of printing the other character, and the ink ribbon 5 is simply wound / wound. It was a repeated drive control of stop. Therefore, the density of the printed characters decreases uniformly for all characters as the number of printed characters increases. This phenomenon is apparently preferable, but it is still wasteful from the viewpoint of extending the life of the cassette ribbon. In other words, the PCS value representing the print density is detected by the optical detecting means, and if the PCS value is less than or equal to the predetermined value, the accuracy of the print information existence and the ink ribbon replacement provision information deteriorates, so a line is drawn to determine the predetermined value. Even if the predetermined value is reached, sufficient printing ability is still available depending on the usage.

The conventional technique and the technique of the present invention will be described in detail below with respect to this content.

FIG. 5 is an explanatory view of drive control of the print head 3 and the ink ribbon 5 in the conventional printing apparatus. When trying to print the characters 95-06-24 50,000 ATM 283,000 on the print medium 2, the print head 3 moves in the print X ₁ or X ₂ direction between the spans of the guide pins P ₁ and P ₂ of the ink ribbon 5. Print while moving. In this case, the ink ribbon 5 is always driven so as to be wound only in the direction of the arrow X ₂ , and when the print head 3 prints in the direction of the arrow X ₂ , the winding is stopped, and the print head 3 moves in the direction of the arrow X _1. When printing in the direction, simple winding / stopping of winding a predetermined amount is repeated. Therefore, the ink ribbon 5 is guided by the guide pin P ₁
The drive control is such that the same position is impacted by the print head 3 several times from the time when the print head 3 reaches the guide pin P ₂ to the time when the print head 3 reaches the guide pin P ₂ . An example in which the presence / absence of print information and the print density are detected by detecting the year a of the handling date 95-06-20 by the optical detection means under such a driving condition will be described. (See Figures 1 and 5) Transaction print on the second line 95-06-24 50,000 ATM 283,
Print the previous transaction of 000, that is 95-06-20 50,000
The CD 333,000 is printed by moving the print head 3 in the X ₂ direction (forward printing), and then printing the transaction on the second line 95
-06-24 50,000 If the print head 3 the ATM 283,000 there is bookkeeping process of printing (back printing) while moving in the direction of arrow X _1, the second row of the transaction print 95-06-24
50,000 ATM 28,300 is the first line transaction print 95-06
The ink ribbon 5 that was once used for printing −20 50,000 CD 33,000 will be used again immediately afterwards, and there will be no time to refresh the ink lost by printing by permeating from the surroundings. The probability that the print density (PCS value) will decrease further than that in “a” makes it easier for the print density (PCS value) to reach the predetermined value earlier than the original ability of the cassette ribbon 5. (This phenomenon becomes remarkable near the limit value of the PCS value.) Therefore, the life of the cassette ribbon becomes shorter than the original ability.

According to the present invention, when printing a character to be optically detected which is important for solving this problem, the ink ribbon 5 used in the previous transaction is used again to print the character to be detected. The drive switching control of the ink ribbon 5 was carried out so as not to happen. The details will be described below.

The ribbon 5 of the endless cassette ribbon 1 usually has a twist N in the middle as shown in FIG. 6 (mebius) to extend the life of the ribbon. In other words, by inserting this twist N, it is possible to obtain an ink ribbon having a length twice the actual length of the ribbon 5. This technique is known, and when printing is performed using the upper half ω ₁ of the ribbon width, the lower half ω ₂ of the ribbon width starts to be used with the progress of winding, and the upper half ω _{1 of the} ribbon width is again used. The used position of the changes with winding. The present invention focuses on this Mébius effect, and prints important characters to be optically detected using the lower half ω ₂ side of the ribbon width, and prints other characters using the upper half ω ₁ of the ribbon width. The ribbon 5 is controlled to be switched in the directions of the arrows Y ₁ and Y ₂ in a timely manner so as to print. (The switching mechanism is well known and not shown.) Therefore, it is avoided that the ribbon 5 once used in the previous transaction prints the optical detection target characters a and a ′ again immediately thereafter, and the ribbon 5 is refreshed. It is possible to keep a high print density (PCS value) for the detection target characters a and a'compared with the other print characters because the time required for one more round is taken.

Further, the drive switching control of the ink ribbon 5 is timely linked with the step number (not shown) of a known pulse motor driving the print head 3 and the encoder (not shown) of the servo motor. It is obvious that switching (overlap processing) eliminates processing time loss. It is also apparent that the switching control can be applied from the time when the print density reaches a predetermined value to reduce the print density unevenness (PCS value difference).

[0022]

As described above, according to the present invention, since the drive switching control of the ink ribbon is performed in a timely manner according to the importance of the print information, the capacity of the cassette ribbon can be used to the maximum without loss of processing time. Can have longer life,
Resource saving can be achieved.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a graph of print density and life of various cassette ribbons.

FIG. 2 is a perspective view of a printing apparatus that implements the cassette ribbon drive control system of the present invention.

FIG. 3 is a perspective view of a cassette ribbon including an ink supply member.

FIG. 4 is an explanatory diagram of a character to be optically detected by a print medium (passbook).

FIG. 5 is an explanatory diagram of driving a cassette ribbon in a conventional technique.

FIG. 6 is an explanatory diagram of a cassette ribbon drive control system of the present invention.

[Explanation of symbols]

 DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1 ... Cassette ribbon main body, 2 ... Printing medium, 3 ... Print head, 4 ... Platen, 5 ... Ink ribbon, 6 ... Ink tank part, 7 ... Ink supply member, 8, 8 '... Ribbon winding guide, 10 ... Ink Refill mouth.

Claims (3)

[Claims] 1. A printing apparatus for printing by using an endless cassette ribbon, wherein a drive band of a cassette ribbon is switched and controlled during printing within a predetermined range of print information and during printing other than that. Drive control system for cassette ribbon. 2. The method according to claim 1, wherein the print density reaches a predetermined value.
2. The drive control switching according to claim 1 is performed.
The cassette ribbon drive control method described in the item. 3. The cassette ribbon drive control system according to claim 1, wherein the drive control switching of the cassette ribbon is performed by overlapping with the printing operation.