JPS62119087A - printer - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To make it possible to carry out printing corresponding to the width of a paper while the width of the paper to be used is checked, by providing a means moved to the lateral direction of the paper along with a printing head and detecting the state corresponding to the presence of the paper. CONSTITUTION:A contact point 4 detecting a state corresponding to the presence of paper is provided to a thermal head 2 and the paper width detection signal in a printer main body 16 is led in a control part 12 to judge the presence of the paper 7. In this case, if no paper is set on a platen 1, the contact point 4 comes in contact with a conductive material 5 to apply positive potential to said material 5 by a power source 6 and, if the paper 7 is set, the contact point 4 is separated from the conductive material 5 and no positive potential is applied. The presence of the paper 7 is judged by the state detection signal corresponding to this. Now, when the presence of the paper is judged, the printing data in a data memory part 13 is led by one character. In this state, the presence of printing data is judged and, when no printing data is present, printing processing is finished. When printing data is present, the printing data previously led by one character is applied to a control part 14 and printing is carried out in the printer main body 16.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION [Technical Field of the Invention] The present invention relates to a printer having means for automatically detecting paper width.

[Prior art and its problems] Recently, printers have been widely used as output terminals for computers, word processors, and the like.

Conventionally, this type of printer requires paper to be set when printing output data, but at this time, the paper may be set incorrectly and the width of the paper and the number of data digits to be printed may not match. . In such a case, if printing is continued as is, the print head will move to a place where there is no paper, and data will be printed. For this reason, the printing results obtained in this way are completely useless and have to be redone, which has the disadvantage of causing a significant deterioration in the efficiency of data printing.

On the other hand, such printers are sometimes used for calculators, etc., but in order to avoid the above-mentioned inconveniences, such printer calculators are designed so that only paper of a specified width can be used, making them economical. had some undesirable drawbacks.

[Object of the Invention] The present invention has been made in view of the above-mentioned circumstances, and it is an object of the present invention to provide a printer that can check the paper width to be used and perform printing in accordance with the width.

[Summary of the Invention] The printer according to the present invention is provided with a means that is moved in the width direction of the paper together with the print head and detects a state depending on the presence or absence of paper, and executes printing processing according to the detection output of this means. It is structured like this.

[Embodiments of the invention] An embodiment of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings.

FIGS. 1(a), 1(b), and 1(c) show schematic configuration diagrams of the printer. Reference numeral 1 denotes a platen on which paper on which data is printed is set, and a print head such as a thermal head 2 is provided opposite to this platen 1. This head 2 is supported by a support rod 3, and is adapted to move along this support rod 3 in the width direction of the paper set on the platen 1.

The thermal head 2 is provided with a contact point 4 that detects the state depending on the presence or absence of paper, and this contact point 4 is also movable in the width direction of the paper together with the head 2.

A conductive material 5, such as conductive rubber or a conductive seal, is disposed with respect to this contact point 4, sandwiching the paper path, that is, the paper set on the platen 1.

In this case, the conductive material 5 is provided on the platen 1 along the movement path of the contact 4. A positive potential of DC 1i16 is applied to this conductive material 5 side.

As a result, if no paper is set on the platen 1, the contact 4 comes into contact with the conductive material 5 as shown in FIG. (In this case, indicated by reference numeral 7) is set, the contact between the contact 4 and the conductive material 5 is broken as shown in FIG.

Next, FIG. 2 shows a circuit diagram of a word processor or the like using such a printer. In the figure, 11
1 is a key manual section, and this key manual section 11 has character keys, numeric keys, print command keys, and the like. The key power of the key power section 11 is then given to the control section 12.

This control section 12 stores various control programs, and supplies control signals such as address data to the data storage section 13, printer control section 14, and display control section 15, respectively, and also provides the data storage section 13 with key human power section 11. Give key human power data. The data stored in the data storage section 13 is sent to the printer control section 14 and the display control section 15.

Print data from the printer control section 14 is given to the printer main body 16. This printer main body 16 has the configuration described in FIG. 1, and is adapted to give a state detection signal corresponding to the output of the contact 4, that is, the presence or absence of paper, to the control section 12 and the printer control section 14, respectively. .

Display data from the display control section 15 is provided to the display section 17 .

Next, the operation of the embodiment configured as described above will be explained according to the flowchart shown in FIG.

It is now assumed that the data storage unit 13 stores print data to be printed. In this state, key human power section 1
When the print command key is operated in step 1, the data storage unit 13
The data is read out and data printing is executed via the printer control section 14. In this case, prior to this, the thermal head 2 is set to the initial position in step A1.

In this state, proceed to step A2. In this step A2, the paper width detection signal from the blink main body 16 is read in the control section 12, and the presence or absence of paper is determined in the next step A3. In this case, if no paper is set on the platen 1 as explained in FIG. 1(b), the contact 4 contacts the conductive material 5 and a positive potential is applied by the power source 6. (C) If the paper 7 is set on the platen 1 as shown, the contact between the contact 4 and the conductive material 5 is broken, and no positive potential is applied, and the state detection signal corresponding to this is released. The presence or absence of paper is determined by

If it is determined that there is paper present, the process proceeds to step A4, and the print data in the data storage section 13 is read by one character. In this state, the presence or absence of print data is determined in step A5, and if it is determined that there is no print data, the print process ends.

On the other hand, if there is print data, the process advances to step 86. In this step 86, the print data read by one character in step A4 is given to the printer control section 14, and printing is executed in the printer main body 16.

Further, from this state, the process advances to step A7, where the print digit is incremented, and the process returns to step A2 again, where the control section 12 reads the state detection signal from the printer main body 16. Thereafter, the presence of paper is determined in step A3,
While it is determined in step A5 that there is print data, the operations from step A2 to step A7 are repeated to print one character at a time.

On the other hand, if it is determined in step A3 that there is no paper,
Proceed to step A8.

In this step 88, a line feed is performed and the thermal head 2 is returned to the initial position. In this state, the process advances to step A9. In this step A9, as in step A2, a state detection signal from the printer main body 16 is read, and in the next step A10, the presence or absence of paper is determined. If it is determined that there is no paper, the process proceeds to step A11, where the display controller 15 displays "No paper" on the display section 17, and the printing process ends. Further, if it is determined in step A10 that there is paper, the process proceeds to step A4 and subsequent steps described above.

Therefore, by doing this, data printing is executed while constantly checking the status depending on the presence or absence of paper, so it is possible to reliably prevent printing in places where there is no paper, and this prevents printing failures. Enables efficient printing work. In addition, when it is determined that there is no paper, the printer performs a changeover operation and then checks the presence or absence of paper again before printing, which has the advantage of being able to print smoothly over the entire paper surface.

Next, FIG. 4 shows another embodiment of the present invention. That is, the figure shows a circuit configuration diagram of a calculator or the like that uses the printer as described above.

In this case, the key manual section 11 has a paper width detection key in addition to character keys and numerical keys. The AND circuit 1 outputs the key force of the paper width detection key in the key force unit 11 outputted via the control unit 12 and the head movement command signal in the digit direction sent from the printer control unit 14 to the printer main body 16.
given to 8. Further, the output of this AND circuit 18 is sent to a digit counter 19. This digit counter 19 counts the number of printed digits corresponding to the paper width. Further, this digit counter 19 is reset by a command from the control section 12. The count contents of the digit counter 19 are determined by the paper width judgment section 20.
given to. This paper width judgment section 20 includes the printer main body 1.
A state detection signal is also provided from 6. As a result, the paper width judgment section 20 waits for the state detection signal corresponding to the paper out state and judges the paper width from the contents of the digit counter 19, and as a result of this judgment, the allowable printing digit number data A, B, C according to the paper width and the error It generates an output and sends it to the control section 12.

The other parts are the same as those in FIG. 2, and the same parts are given the same reference numerals and the explanation will be omitted.

Next, the operation of the embodiment configured as described above will be explained according to the flowchart of FIG.

First, the paper width detection key is operated in the key manual section 11. Then, in step B1, the head 2 is set to the initial position. Next, the process proceeds to step B2, where the control section 12 outputs a reset command to the digit counter 19, and the contents of the digit counter 19 are cleared. In this state, step B3
At this point, the control unit 12 outputs the key force of the paper width detection key.

Then, the process proceeds to step B4, where a command signal for moving the head in the digit direction is sent from the printer control section 14 to the printer main body 16, and at the same time is also given to the digit counter 19 via the AND circuit 18. As a result, the head 2 is moved in the digit direction by one character in the printer main body 16, and at the same time, step B5
The digit counter 19 is incremented by one.

In this state, a state detection signal corresponding to the presence or absence of paper is read in step B6, and the presence or absence of paper is determined in the next step B7. If it is determined that there is paper now, the process returns to step B4. Then, the printer control section 14 again sends a head movement command signal in the digit direction to the printer main body 16, and at the same time, it is also applied to the digit counter 19 via the AND circuit 18. As a result, the head 2 in the printer body 16 is further moved in the digit direction by one character, and at the same time, the digit counter 19 is incremented by 1 in step B5. In this way, the operations from step 84 to step B7 are repeated until it is determined in step B7 that there is no paper from the result of reading the state detection signal. If it is determined in step B7 that there is no paper, the process proceeds to step B8.

In this step B8, the count contents of the digit counter 19 are sent to the paper width determining section 20. Then, the paper width determining section 20 determines the maximum number of printable digits allowed from the count contents of the digit counter 19, and outputs the maximum number of printable digits signals A and B.
, C or an error signal is output.

Here, the error signal is, for example, if the display on a calculator is 10 digits, the minimum number of digits to be printed on a printer is 12, considering the decimal point, sign, etc. in addition to the numerical value, so if the maximum number of digits is This occurs when the number of digits is less than 12. Judgment of this error signal is executed in step B9, and if an error signal is generated, step BIO
Then, an error is displayed on the display section 17 via the display control section 15. On the other hand, if it is not an error signal, the process proceeds to step B11, where the maximum permissible printing digit number signals A, B,
One of C is set.

Therefore, from now on, printing will be performed according to the maximum number of printing digits set in this way. Specifically, for example, in a 10-digit calculator, rl 23456
Assuming that 7890J data is printed, and the maximum number of printing digits is 14, it will be 1234567.890. Only one 3-digit separator "," will be printed, such as u+. Similarly, if the maximum number of printable digits is 16, then 1.234,567.890. Three 3-digit separators "," will be printed, such as u+.

Similarly, if the maximum number of printing digits is 12 digits, 123456
7890, the triple digit separator "," like + is not printed at all, and a space is inserted between "," and "+], so "," and "+" are printed consecutively. I come to do it.

Therefore, by doing this, it is possible to detect the maximum number of printing digits according to the paper width, so that data printing can be executed in a printing format that is optimal for the paper width. Furthermore, since a plurality of types of paper can be used, there is an economical advantage.

It should be noted that the present invention is not limited to the above-mentioned embodiments, but can be implemented with appropriate modifications without changing the gist.

In the above embodiment, a device having a contact point and a conductive material corresponding to the contact point is used as means for detecting the state depending on the presence or absence of paper, and when the paper passes the edge and becomes a paper fish, the contact point comes into contact with the conductive material. , a paper width detection signal to that effect is output. For example, this sensor uses a sensor that detects reflected light from the paper surface by taking advantage of the difference in light reflectance between the paper surface and the platen surface. Various other means are conceivable, such as one in which the paper width detection signal may be obtained from the output state of the paper width.

[Effects of the Invention] According to the present invention, it is possible to detect a state depending on the presence or absence of paper set, and to check the paper width based on this state, to efficiently perform printing in accordance with this state.

[Brief explanation of drawings]

FIGS. 1(a), (b), and (c) are schematic configuration diagrams showing one embodiment of the present invention, FIG. 2 is a circuit diagram of the same embodiment, and FIG. 3 explains the operation of the same embodiment. FIG. 4 is a circuit configuration diagram showing another embodiment of the present invention, and FIG. 5 is a flow chart for explaining the operation of the same embodiment. 2... Thermal head, 4... Contact, 5... Conductive material, 6... Power supply, 7... Paper, 11... Key human power section, 12... Control section, 13. ...Data storage section, 14.
...Printer control unit, 16...Printer main body, 19.
... Digit counter, 20... Paper width judgment section. Applicant's agent Patent attorney Takehiko Suzue (a) Figure 3 Figure 5

Claims (1)

[Claims] A print head that is moved in the width direction of the paper, a means that is moved in the width direction of the paper together with the print head to detect a state according to the presence or absence of paper, and a determination as to the presence or absence of paper based on the detection output of this means. A printer characterized by comprising means.