JPH1134366A - Printer - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To suppress temperature rise of a printer head without sacrifice of print efficiency of a printer. SOLUTION: The dot impact type printer comprises means 2 for detecting the temperature of a print head, and a control section 4 for altering the number of head pins to be driven depending on the temperature state of detected print head. When the temperature of the print head rises, the control section 4 divides the head pins to be driven and performs printing in both directions. Furthermore, the control section 4 previously calculates the number of print dots for each pin and performs the print operation while dividing into a plurality of times thus preventing temperature rise only of specific pins.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a printer for printing a dot image by using a plurality of head pins,
In particular, the present invention relates to a dot impact type printer device having a control unit for temperature rise of a print head.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art When a printer is driven continuously,
There is a problem in that when the print head is heated to a temperature higher than the allowable temperature, an adverse effect occurs. Conventionally, various measures against this temperature rise have been considered.

[0003] As a conventional printer device for controlling the temperature of the print head, there is the following one.

For example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2-81643 discloses a method based on temperature data of a print head detected at regular intervals via a temperature detecting means in line 15 on the upper right of page 2 of the publication. A printer control method is disclosed in which a temperature rise rate of a print head is calculated, and when the temperature rise rate exceeds a predetermined value, driving of the print head is regulated.

[0005] Further, the regulation of the driving of the print head is described in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. (1) (8), stopping the driving of the print head in line 8 on the lower right, and printing in the line (12) lower right line on page 12 of the document. It is described that the printing speed of the head is reduced.

Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. Sho 64-14066 discloses a means for detecting the temperature of the print head and the printing speed in accordance with the temperature state of the print head in the eighth line on the lower right of page (1). And a control unit for varying the print head temperature.

FIG. 5 shows a conventional example (Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 64-140).
No. 66) is a diagram showing a configuration and a control method,
FIG. 3A is a block diagram showing a configuration, and FIG. 3B is a diagram showing a control method for changing a printing speed according to a print head temperature.

[0008]

A first problem is that in the prior art, the regulation of the driving of the print head against the rise in the temperature of the print head is to stop and slow down the print head. However, this method takes time to return to the normal state.

The reason is that even if the head speed is reduced, energy is applied to all the pins, so that the load applied to the driver circuit is the same as usual.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION It is an object of the present invention to suppress a rise in the temperature of a print head without lowering the speed and stopping the print head and reducing the efficiency.

It is another object of the present invention to reduce the amount of energy by changing the number of head pins to be printed, thereby releasing a regulated state (a stopped state or a decelerated state of the print head). An object of the present invention is to increase the printing efficiency by shortening the time and increasing the printing in the normal state.

[0012]

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION According to the present invention, there is provided a dot-impact printer comprising: means for detecting a temperature of a print head; and means for detecting a temperature of the detected print head. And a control unit for changing the number of head pins to be driven in accordance with the printer device.

Further, the printer is characterized in that, when the temperature of the print head rises, the control section divides the number of the driven head pins for printing.

The control unit may calculate the number of printing impacts for each of the head pins in advance, and divide the printing operation into a plurality of times when the number of the impacts exceeds a preset reference value. Printer device characterized by the following.

The control unit calculates the number of impacts for each head pin in advance, allocates the number of impacts to each pin in order to average the number of impacts for each pin, and divides the printing operation into a plurality of times. The printer device is also characterized in that the printing is performed after the printing.

As described above, the present invention provides a means for detecting the temperature of a print head in a dot impact printer, a control unit for varying the number of pins for driving head pins according to the temperature state of the print head, The printer device is characterized in that, in a case where the temperature becomes higher than the conventional state due to a rise in temperature, the number of impacts of the print head pins is divided and the printing operation is performed.

According to the present invention, since the total number of pins of the print head is divided and printing is performed, the energy applied to the drive circuit is suppressed. The time of the transition temperature curve is reduced.

FIG. 4 is a diagram comparing the change of the head temperature of the present invention with that of the conventional example. The head temperature of the apparatus of the present invention in (1) is short (t1) and is in the normal temperature zone (dotted line). Part)
However, in the conventional example (2), it takes a longer time (t2) to return to the normal temperature zone.

Hereinafter, the operation of the present invention will be described in more detail.

Conventionally, heat protection of a print head in an impact-type printer apparatus is based on information on head temperature detection (normal temperature, medium temperature, and high temperature), and is bidirectional printing at normal temperature, unidirectional printing when transitioning from normal temperature to medium temperature, A system in which primary printing is stopped at the time of transition from medium temperature to high temperature is performed.

However, for example, in one-way printing at a medium temperature, since all the head pins are used, the temperature reduction rate is actually small.

Therefore, in the present invention, for example, only half of all the head pins are used at the time of transition from the normal temperature to the medium temperature, and the printing is performed in both directions, so that the heat energy applied to the printing of all the head pins is halved. , The recovery of heat generation from medium temperature to normal temperature can be promoted, and the time from medium temperature to high temperature can be extended.

[0023]

Next, embodiments of the present invention will be described in detail with reference to the drawings.

[First Embodiment] [Explanation of Configuration] FIG. 1A is a block diagram of a first embodiment of the present invention. In FIG. , 3 ... head circuit section, 4 ... control section,
a: head temperature information; b: print head designation information.

FIG. 1B is an example of a pin arrangement diagram of the print head. In this example, the head pins indicated by circles have a configuration of L rows and R rows. In the figure, a dot image is printed while moving in the horizontal direction.

[Explanation of Operation] Next, the operation of the embodiment of the present invention will be described with reference to the flowchart of FIG.

First, the control unit 4 receives the head temperature information a from the temperature detection unit 2 and determines the current temperature information.

When the value of the head temperature information a rises from the normal temperature to the medium temperature state, the control unit 4 performs the next printing operation.
Sends to the head circuit unit 3 the drive of half of the print head pins (L columns) as print head designation information b. The print head 1 performs printing by driving only the L-row pins based on the print head designation information b.

After the printing of the L row is completed, the control section 4 sends to the head circuit section 3 the fact that half of the print head pins (R row) are driven as print head designation information b. Based on this information, the print head 1 drives the R column again to perform printing, thereby completing printing for one line.

When the value of the head temperature information a is changed from the medium temperature state,
When the temperature is lowered to the normal temperature state, the control unit 4 sends the print head information b designating all the drive of the print head pins to the head circuit unit 3 and prints one line by the print head 1. At this time, the printing direction is bidirectional printing, and the printing operation is performed at high speed.

[Second Embodiment] A second embodiment will be described with reference to the flowchart of FIG.

In the first embodiment, the method of simply dividing half of the print head pins is used. However, in actual printing, there are few cases of full dot printing, and each dot (the number of impacts) is Distributed randomly. For this reason, the driving of a specific pin becomes frequent, and the temperature may rise. Therefore, in the present embodiment, each step shown in FIG. 3 is performed.

Step [Development of Print Data in Pin Buffer] The print data is developed in the pin buffer.

Step [Calculation of Number of Printed Dots for Each Pin] Based on the data developed in the pin buffer, whether there is data to be printed for each pin or the number of printed dots (number of impacts) is calculated.

Step [weight distribution analysis for each pin] and step [value to be printed at once? The number of dots for each pin obtained as a result of the above calculation is compared with a predefined reference value. In the present embodiment, as the reference value, at a medium speed, one pin may be used in one printing operation as a whole (per unit time).
An optimally balanced number of dots (number of impacts) is set in which the printing efficiency is good and the amount of heat generation is within an allowable range.

Step [Distribution of the first and second times by weight] and Step [Designation of print mode division] As a result of the above comparison, one of the calculated dot numbers of each pin is calculated.
Number of dots (impacts) exceeding the reference value even with one pin
If so, the print designation mode is set to the divided print mode, and the print data is distributed to the print editing buffer for the first and second times.

Specifically, the pin arrangement of the print head in FIG. 1B will be described as an example. For example, the number of print dots for each pin of dot data for one line to be printed now As a result of the calculation, if the number of dots of the pin L1 at the top of the L column exceeds the reference value, the divided printing mode is designated, and the divided number of dots of the pin L1 (the number of impacts) can be divided and printed in dot image units. Thus, the dot image is stored in the print editing buffer.

Step [Head Temperature Information Input] and Later Next, according to the head temperature information, if it is a medium temperature area, the previous print designation is discriminated. Performs printing twice, based on information in the first and second print editing buffers.

Step [Print Mode Batch Designation] On the other hand, if the comparison result shows that all pins do not exceed the reference value, the batch print mode is designated.

Step [Input of Head Temperature Information] and Later Next, based on the head temperature information, the printing mode is determined if the printing is in the medium temperature range, and if the batch printing mode is selected, printing is performed using all dots in both directions.

[Third Embodiment] In this embodiment, the number of dots (the number of impacts) of each pin is calculated so as to be averaged.

In this method, the number of dots of each pin is calculated from the entire complete dot image to be printed, and the average value of the number of dots of each pin is obtained. Is allocated to other pins with a number of dots smaller than the average value, and the divided dot image is formed in a print editing buffer, whereby the print is divided into a plurality of times and printed.

As a result, it is possible to prevent the temperature of a particular pin from rising.

[0044]

The first effect is that the temperature rise can be suppressed without lowering the printing efficiency.

The reason is that by changing the number of head pins to be printed, the amount of energy can be suppressed, and
This is because the printing efficiency can be increased by eliminating the stopped state or decelerated state of the print head and increasing the printing in the normal state as in the conventional example.

A second effect is that the return time from the intermediate temperature range to the normal temperature range is reduced.

The reason is that, by suppressing the drive amount of the number of pins with respect to the print head, the consumed energy is reduced, so that the heat generation amount is reduced and the heat radiation time is shortened.

The third effect is that it is possible to prevent a temperature rise of only a specific pin.

The reason is that the number of impacts of each pin is dispersed and averaged for printing.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram (A) and a head pin diagram (B) of a print head according to an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a control flowchart (simple division example) of the first embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 3 is a flowchart in consideration of print edit bits according to a second embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 4 is a diagram showing a comparison between a print head temperature and time graph (A) according to the present invention and a graph (B) according to a conventional technique.

FIG. 5 is a diagram showing a configuration and a method of a conventional example.

[Explanation of symbols]

 1 print head, 2 temperature detection unit, 3 head circuit unit, 4 control unit, a head temperature information, b print head designation information

Claims (4)

[Claims] 1. A dot impact printer, comprising: means for detecting the temperature of a print head; and a control unit for changing the number of head pins to be driven in accordance with the detected temperature state of the print head. A printer device characterized by the above-mentioned. 2. The printer device according to claim 1, wherein the control unit divides the number of the driven head pins and performs printing when the temperature of the print head rises. 3. The control unit calculates the number of print impacts for each of the head pins in advance, and divides the print operation into a plurality of times when the number of impacts exceeds a preset reference value. The printer device according to claim 1, wherein: 4. The control unit calculates the number of impacts of each head pin in advance, allocates the number of impacts to each pin so as to average the number of impacts of each pin, and divides the printing operation into a plurality of times. 2. The printer according to claim 1, wherein the printing is performed.